Ways of forming relative clauses[edit]
Languages differ in many ways in how relative clauses are expressed:
How the role of the shared noun phrase is indicated in the embedded clause.
How the two clauses are joined together.
Where the embedded clause is placed relative to the head noun (in the process indicating which noun phrase in the main clause is modified).
For example, the English sentence "The man that I saw yesterday went home" can be described as follows:
The role of the shared noun in the embedded clause is indicated by gapping (i.e. in the embedded clause "that I saw yesterday", a gap is left after "saw" to indicate where the shared noun would go).
The clauses are joined by the complementizer "that".
The embedded clause is placed after the head noun "the man".