Which word class?

[Andrew Patterson]

This may sound like a naive question, but just what is the essential difference between a relative pronoun and a relative adverb?

You may accuse me of reinventing the wheel, but considering their function, wouldn't it be more accurate to refer to them as relative determiners? Where, when and why (what reason.) despite being classified as relative adverbs in relative clauses still seem to make reference to a noun or pronoun more specific. Exceptions might be "if" and "whether" which genuinely seem to describe a verb.

Likewise, when I think about it, shouldn't the question words be classified as determiners too, since they determine just which noun/pronoun it is that we are talking about. The exceptions again could be "whether" and "if".

What do you think?

[Andrew Patterson]

Whoa, no replies after three days.

Was it the way I put it, do you need examples, or further explainations or something, or do you just think it's a silly post?

[abufletcher]

I would imagine that most teachers just feel this level of grammatical labeling is largely irrelevant to language teaching. Even within linguistics proper such pedagogic grammar labels are of little value.

In my own career as an EFL teacher (going on 25 years now) I've decided that "noun" and "verb" and "adjective" are occasionally useful terms in the classroom but all the rest of it is just confusing to learners.

[Andrew Patterson]

Abu Fletcher wrote:

I would imagine that most teachers just feel this level of grammatical labeling is largely irrelevant to language teaching. Even within linguistics proper such pedagogic grammar labels are of little value.

In my own career as an EFL teacher (going on 25 years now) I've decided that "noun" and "verb" and "adjective" are occasionally useful terms in the classroom but all the rest of it is just confusing to learners.

I guess it depends on just who you're teaching as to whether other lables are useful.

It is most useful to have a clear picture of the grammar in one's own mind whether or not you use actual grammatical lables. I teach in Poland and the Polish language does not have any articles but it does have determiners. I use this fact to help them understand articles.

* Articles: a, an, the
* Quantifiers: all, few, many, several, some, every
* Possessives: her, his, its, my, our, their, your
* Demonstratives: this, that, these, those
* Cardinal Numbers

"It's not my pen," "it's your pen", etc. "I'm not talking about "these books", I'm talking about "those books", etc.

However, my question may not have any immediate bearing on my teaching. The important thing in teaching relative clauses is whether they are defining or non defining. I like to use the phrase "by the way" to explain the non defining ones.

Even within linguistics proper such pedagogic grammar labels are of little value.

I never considered these lables to be wholly pedagogical, I wonder why you do, even though you say you don't actually use them. I brought the subject up because I felt that the term was misleading. One thing I do know is that by calling possessives, etc adjectives one really is confusing the students because they are not describing the noun, but rather making reference to it more specific.