RELATIVE CLAUSES

A relative pronoun is often translated as ‘who’, ‘whom’ ‘whose’ etc.

Here is how they decline:

REMEMBER: relative pronouns agree with their antecedent/noun in number and gender

BUT NOT CASE! (The case of the relative pronoun is determined by their function in the relative clause)

E.g. vir qui in horto sedet cantat = The man, who sits in the garden, is singing.

  • In this example, the relative pronoun ‘qui’ is masculine and singular to agree with its antecedent ‘vir’

  • It is nominative because ‘qui’ is the subject of ‘sedet’

E.g. 2: vir quem femina in horto videt cantat = The man, whom the woman sees in the garden, is singing.

  • In this example, the relative pronoun ‘quem’ is masculine and singular to agree with its antecedent ‘vir’

  • BUT its case is accusative because it is the object of ‘videt’

The easiest way to work out the case of the relative pronoun is to isolate the relative clause and turn it into its own sentence.

E.g. The man, whom the woman sees in the garden, is singing = The man is singing (Main clause) + The women sees the man in the garden (Relative clause)

It is now obvious that the relative pronoun for ‘the man’ is the object/accusative case.

quidam, quaedam, quoddam:

You can also add -dam to the end of all the relative pronouns to make their adjectives

They are translated as: one, a certain, some.

They decline like this:

Note - the highlighted part on the table shows a letter change from ‘m’ to ‘n’ - don’t forget this!

Interrogative Pronouns

E.g. Who? What? For whom? etc.)

They conjugate very similar to relative pronouns, with a few changes (I have highlighted the changes):

The adjective form of interrogative pronouns go exactly like qui, quae quod

  • Who? What? etc.

  • E.g. Who is shouting? and What do you see?