Posted by rfvv on Tuesday, November 26, 2013 at 6:56am.
a statement about what will happen in the future
(What is the part of speech of 'what'? Is 'what' an interrogative pronoun or a relative pronoun?)
English - Writeacher, Tuesday, November 26, 2013 at 7:58am
In this (not a complete sentence yet!), "what" is an interrogative pronoun. It's introducing an indirect question.
English - rfvv, Tuesday, November 26, 2013 at 8:32am
Thank you.
(What about this one? Is #1 the same as #2?)
English - Writeacher, Tuesday, November 21. a statement about what will happen in the future
2. a statement about the things which will happen in the future 6, 2013 at 10:03am
Both mean the same thing, except that 1 has that indirect question in it introduced by "what," while 2 has a relative clause introduced by "which."
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Thank you for your help.
1. a statement about what will happen in the future
2. a statement about the things which will happen in the future
(In Sentence 2, 'the things which' can be changed into 'what,' which is a relative pronoun. So 'what' in sentence 1 can be a relative pronoun, which mean 'the things which'? What do you think about this opinion?)
When you change "the things which" into "what," you have turned a relative clause into an indirect question.
Direct question ~~> What will happen in the future?
Indirect question ~~> about what will happen in the future?
I've never seen "what" listed as a relative pronoun.
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/645/01/
http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/pronouns-interrogative.htm
In sentence 1, "what" is an interrogative pronoun, not a relative pronoun. It is used to introduce an indirect question. For example, in the sentence "Can you tell me what will happen in the future?", "what" is used to ask about the statement about the future. It is not equivalent to "the things which".
In sentence 2, "the things which" can be replaced with "what" to make the sentence more concise and still convey the same meaning. However, in this case, "what" is still an interrogative pronoun, not a relative pronoun. Relative pronouns, such as "which" or "that", are used to introduce a relative clause that provides additional information about a noun or pronoun in the main clause. For example, in the sentence "The things which will happen in the future are unpredictable", "which" is used to introduce the relative clause "which will happen in the future" to provide more information about "things".
So, in conclusion, "what" in sentence 1 is an interrogative pronoun, and it is not equivalent to "the things which" in sentence 2, which is a relative clause introduced by the relative pronoun "which".