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Relative clause

A relative clause is a clause that modifies a noun or noun phrase and uses some grammatical device to indicate that one of the arguments in the relative clause refers to the noun or noun phrase. For example, in the sentence I met a man who wasn't too sure of himself, the subordinate clause who wasn't too sure of himself is a relative clause since it modifies the noun man and uses the pronoun who to indicate that the same "man" is referred to in the subordinate clause (in this case as its subject).

In many languages, relative clauses are introduced by a special class of pronouns called relative pronouns, such as who in the example just given. In other languages, relative clauses may be marked in different ways: they may be introduced by a special class of conjunctions called relativizers, the main verb of the relative clause may appear in a special morphological variant, or a relative clause may be indicated by word order alone. In some languages, more than one of these mechanisms may be possible.

Bound and free
A bound relative clause, the type most often considered, qualifies an explicit element (usually a noun or noun phrase) appearing in the main clause, and refers back to that element by means of some explicit or implicit device within the relative clause.

The relative clause may also function as an embedded clause within a main (or higher-level) clause, thereby forming a matrix sentence. The noun in the main clause that the relative clause modifies is called the head noun, or (particularly when referred back to by a relative pronoun) the antecedent.

For example, in the English sentence "The person whom I saw yesterday went home", the relative clause "whom I saw yesterday" modifies the head noun person, and the relative pronoun whom refers back to the referent of that noun. The sentence is equivalent to the following two sentences: "I saw a person yesterday. The person went home". The shared argument need not fulfill the same role in both clauses; in this example the same person is referred to by the subject of the matrix clause, but the direct object of the relative clause.

A free relative clause (or fused relative ), on the other hand, does not have an explicit antecedent external to itself. Instead, the relative clause itself takes the place of an argument in the matrix clause. For example, in the English sentence "I like what I see", the clause what I see is a free relative clause, because it has no antecedent, but itself serves as the object of the verb like in the main clause. Alternatively, one could argue that the free relative clause has a zero as its antecedent.

Restrictive and non-restrictive
Bound relative clauses may or may not be restrictive. A restrictive relative clause is a relative clause that functions as a restrictive modifier. A non-restrictive relative clause is a relative clause that is not a restrictive relative clause. Whereas a non-restrictive or non-defining relative clause merely provides supplementary information, a restrictive or defining relative clause modifies the meaning of its head word (restricts its possible referent). For example:
 * The person who lives in this house has not been seen for days. This contains the restrictive relative clause who lives in this house, which modifies the meaning of person and is essential to the sentence. If this clause were omitted, it would no longer be known which person is being referred to, and the remaining part would not really make sense.
 * The mayor, who lives in this house, has not been seen for days. This contains a non-restrictive relative clause since this provides supplementary information about the mayor but is not essential to the sentence. If this clause were omitted, it would still be known who is meant (the mayor), and the remaining part would still make sense.

In speaking, it is natural to make slight pauses around non-restrictive clauses, and in English this is shown in writing by commas (as in the examples). However, many languages distinguish the two types of relative clauses in this way only in speaking, not in writing. Another difference in English is that only restrictive relative clauses may be introduced with that or use the "zero" relative pronoun (see English relative clauses for details).

A non-restrictive relative clause may have a whole sentence as its antecedent rather than a specific noun phrase; for example: Here, which refers not to the bed or the cat but to the entire proposition expressed in the main clause, namely the situation of the cat being allowed on the bed.
 * The cat was allowed on the bed, which annoyed the dog.

Formation methods
Languages differ in many ways in how relative clauses are expressed:
 * 1) How the role of the shared noun phrase is indicated in the embedded clause.
 * 2) How the two clauses are joined together.
 * 3) 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 person that I saw yesterday went home" can be described as follows:
 * 1) The role of the shared noun in the embedded clause is indicated by gapping; that is, a gap is left in the object position after "saw", implying that the shared noun phrase ("the person") is to be understood to fill that gap and to serve as the object of the verb "saw".
 * 2) The clauses are joined by the complementizer "that".
 * 3) The embedded clause is placed after the head noun "the person".

The following sentences indicate various possibilities (only some of which are grammatical in English):
 * "The person [that I saw yesterday] went home". (A complementizer linking the two clauses with a gapping strategy indicating the role of the shared noun in the embedded clause. One possibility in English. Very common cross-linguistically.)
 * "The person [I saw yesterday] went home". (Gapping strategy, with no word joining the clauses—also known as a reduced relative clause. One possibility in English. Used in Arabic when the head noun is indefinite, as in "a person" instead of "the person".)
 * "The person [whom I saw yesterday] went home". (A relative pronoun indicating the role of the shared noun in the embedded clause—in this case, the direct object. Used in formal English, as in Latin, German or Russian.)
 * "The person [seen by me yesterday] went home". (A reduced relative clause, in this case passivized. One possibility in English.)
 * "The person [that I saw him yesterday] went home". (A complementizer linking the two sentences with a resumptive pronoun indicating the role of the shared noun in the embedded clause, as in Arabic, Hebrew or Persian.)
 * "The person [that him I saw yesterday] went home". (Similar to the previous, but with the resumptive pronoun fronted. This occurs in modern Greek and as one possibility in modern Hebrew; the combination that him of complementizer and resumptive pronoun behaves similarly to a unitary relative pronoun.)
 * "The [I saw yesterday]'s person went home". (Preceding relative clause with gapping and use of a possessive particle—as normally used in a genitive construction—to link the relative clause to the head noun, as in Chinese.)
 * "The [yesterday I seeing]'s person went home". (Preceding relative clause with gapping, and Nominalized the final verb, then use of a possessive particle—as normally used in a genitive construction—to link the relative clause to the head noun. This occurs in many Sino-Tibetan languages and possibly developed from "relative clause + noun" > "nominalized clause + noun" > "genitive construction"., as in Tibetan.)
 * "The [I saw yesterday] person went home". (Preceding relative clause with gapping and no linking word, as in Japanese or Mongolian.)
 * "The person [of my seeing yesterday] went home". (Nominalized relative clause, as in Turkish.)
 * "[Which person I saw yesterday], that person went home". (A correlative structure, as in Hindi.)
 * "[I saw the person yesterday] went home." (An unreduced, internally headed relative clause, as in Navajo.)

Strategies for indicating the role of the shared noun in the relative clause
There are four main strategies for indicating the role of the shared noun phrase in the embedded clause. These are typically listed in order of the degree to which the noun in the relative clause has been reduced, from most to least:

 * 1) Gap strategy or gapped relative clause
 * 2) Relative pronoun
 * 3) Pronoun retention
 * 4) Nonreduction

Gapped relative clause
In this strategy, there is simply a gap in the relative clause where the shared noun would go. This is normal in English, for example, and also in Chinese and Japanese. This is the most common type of relative clause, especially in verb-final languages with prenominal relative clauses, but is also widespread among languages with postnominal externally headed relative clauses.

There may or may not be any marker used to join the relative and main clauses. (Languages with a case-marked relative pronoun are technically not considered to employ the gapping strategy even though they do in fact have a gap, since the case of the relative pronoun indicates the role of the shared noun.) Often the form of the verb is different from that in main clauses and is to some degree nominalized, as in Turkish and in English reduced relative clauses.

In non-verb-final languages, apart from languages like Thai and Vietnamese with very strong politeness distinctions in their grammars, gapped relative clauses tend, however, to be restricted to positions high up in the accessibility hierarchy. With obliques and genitives, non-verb-final languages that do not have politeness restrictions on pronoun use tend to use pronoun retention. English is unusual in that all roles in the embedded clause can be indicated by gapping: e.g. "I saw the person who is my friend", but also (in progressively less accessible positions cross-linguistically, according to the accessibility hierarchy described below) "... who I know", "... who I gave a book to", "... who I spoke with", "... who I run slower than". Usually, languages with gapping disallow it beyond a certain level in the accessibility hierarchy, and switch to a different strategy at this point. Classical Arabic, for example, only allows gapping in the subject and sometimes the direct object; beyond that, a resumptive pronoun must be used. Some languages have no allowed strategies at all past a certain point—e.g. in many Austronesian languages, such as Tagalog, all relative clauses must have the shared noun serving the subject role in the embedded clause. In these languages, relative clauses with shared nouns serving "disallowed" roles can be expressed by passivizing the embedded sentence, thereby moving the noun in the embedded sentence into the subject position. This, for example, would transform "The person who I gave a book to" into "The person who was given a book by me". Generally, languages such as this "conspire" to implement general relativization by allowing passivization from all positions — hence a sentence equivalent to "The person who is run slower than by me" is grammatical. Gapping is often used in conjunction with case-marked relative pronouns (since the relative pronoun indicates the case role in the embedded clause), but this is not necessary (e.g. Chinese and Japanese both using gapping in conjunction with an indeclinable complementizer).

Relative pronoun type
This is a type of gapped relative clause, but is distinguished by the fact that the role of the shared noun in the embedded clause is indicated indirectly by the case marking of the marker (the relative pronoun) used to join the main and embedded clauses. All languages which use relative pronouns have them in clause-initial position: though one could conceivably imagine a clause-final relative pronoun analogous to an adverbial subordinator in that position, they are unknown.

Some languages have what are described as "relative pronouns" (in that they agree with some properties of the head noun, such as number and gender) but which do not actually indicate the case role of the shared noun in the embedded clause. Classical Arabic has "relative pronouns" which are case-marked, but which agree in case with the head noun. Case-marked relative pronouns in the strict sense are almost entirely confined to European languages, where they are widespread except among the Celtic family and Indo-Aryan family. The influence of Spanish has led to their adaption by a very small number of Native American languages, of which the best known are the Keresan languages.

Pronoun retention type
In this type, the position relativized is indicated by means of a personal pronoun in the same syntactic position as would ordinarily be occupied by a noun phrase of that type in the main clause—known as a resumptive pronoun. It is equivalent to saying "The woman who I saw her yesterday went home". Pronoun retention is very frequently used for relativization of inaccessible positions on the accessibility hierarchy. In Persian and Classical Arabic, for example, resumptive pronouns are required when the embedded role is other than the subject or direct object, and optional in the case of the direct object. Resumptive pronouns are common in non-verb-final languages of Africa and Asia, and also used by the Celtic languages of northwest Europe and Romanian ("Omul pe care l -am văzut ieri a mers acasă"/"The man who I saw him yesterday went home"). They also occur in deeply embedded positions in English, as in "That's the girl that I don't know what she did", although this is sometimes considered non-standard.

Only a very small number of languages, of which the best known is Yoruba, have pronoun retention as their sole grammatical type of relative clause.

Nonreduction type
In the nonreduction type, unlike the other three, the shared noun occurs as a full-fledged noun phrase in the embedded clause, which has the form of a full independent clause. Typically, it is the head noun in the main clause that is reduced or missing. Some languages use relative clauses of this type with the normal strategy of embedding the relative clause next to the head noun. These languages are said to have internally headed relative clauses, which would be similar to the (ungrammatical) English structure "[You see the girl over there] is my friend" or "I took [you see the girl over there] out on a date". This is used, for example, in Navajo, which uses a special relative verb (as with some other Native American languages).

A second strategy is the correlative-clause strategy used by Hindi and other Indo-Aryan languages, as well as Bambara. This strategy is equivalent to saying "Which girl you see over there, she is my daughter" or "Which knife I killed my friend with, the police found that knife". It is "correlative" because of the corresponding "which ... that ..." demonstratives or "which ... she/he/it ..." pronouns, which indicate the respective nouns being equated. The shared noun can either be repeated entirely in the main clause or reduced to a pronoun. There is no need to front the shared noun in such a sentence. For example, in the second example above, Hindi would actually say something equivalent to "I killed my friend with which knife, the police found that knife".

Dialects of some European languages, such as Italian, do use the nonreduction type in forms that could be glossed in English as "The person just passed us by, she introduced me to the chancellor here."

In general, however, nonreduction is restricted to verb-final languages, though it is more common among those that are head-marking.

Strategies for joining the relative clause to the main clause
The following are some of the common strategies for joining the two clauses:
 * Use of an indeclinable particle (specifically, a relativizer) inserted into the sentence, placed next to the modified noun; the embedded clause is likewise inserted into the appropriate position, typically placed on the other side of the complementizer. This strategy is very common and arguably occurs in English with the word that ("the woman that I saw"), though this interpretation of "that" as something other than a relative pronoun is controversial (see below). In the modern varieties of Arabic (using illi placed after the modified noun); in Chinese (using de placed before the modified noun).
 * Use of a relative pronoun. Prototypically, a relative pronoun agrees with the head noun in gender, number, definiteness, animacy, etc., but adopts the case that the shared noun assumes in the embedded, not matrix, clause. This is the case in a number of conservative European languages, such as Latin, German and Russian. Many languages also have similar linking words commonly termed "relative pronouns" that agree in some way with the head noun, but do not adopt the case role of the embedded clause. In English, for example, the use of who vs. which agrees with the animacy of the head noun, but there is no case agreement except in the formal English contrast who vs. whom. Similarly, in Classical Arabic, there is a relative pronoun that agrees in number, gender, definiteness and case with the head noun (rather than taking the case role of the noun in the embedded clause). Languages with prototypical relative pronouns typically use the gapping strategy for indicating the role in the embedded clause, since the relative pronoun itself indicates the role by its case. (Classical Arabic, where the case marking indicates something else, uses a resumptive pronoun.) Some linguists prefer to use the term relative pronoun only for the prototypical cases (but in this case it is unclear what to call the non-prototypical cases).
 * Directly inserting the embedded clause in the matrix clause at the appropriate position, with no word used to join them. This is common, for example, in English (cf. "The person I saw yesterday went home"), and is used in Classical Arabic in relative clauses that modify indefinite nouns.
 * By nominalizing the relative clause (e.g. converting it to a participial construction). Generally, no relative pronoun or complementizer is used. This occurs, for example, in reduced relative clauses in English (e.g. "The person seen by me yesterday went home" or "The person planning to go home soon is my friend"). Formal German makes common use of such participial relative clauses, which can become extremely long. This is also the normal strategy in Turkish, which has sentences equivalent to "I ate the potato of Hasan's giving to Sina" (in place of "I ate the potato that Hasan gave to Sina"). This can be viewed as a situation in which the "complementizer" is attached to the verb of the embedded clause (e.g. in English, "-ing" or "-ed" can be viewed as a type of complementizer).

Position of the head noun with respect to the relative clause
The positioning of a relative clause before or after a head noun is related to the more general concept of branching in linguistics. Languages that place relative clauses after their head noun (so-called head-initial or VO languages) generally also have adjectives and genitive modifiers following the head noun, as well as verbs preceding their objects. French, Spanish and Arabic are prototypical languages of this sort. Languages that place relative clauses before their head noun (so-called head-final or OV languages) generally also have adjectives and genitive modifiers preceding the head noun, as well as verbs following their objects. Turkish and Japanese are prototypical languages of this sort. Not all languages fit so easily into these categories. English, for example, is generally head-first, but has adjectives preceding their head nouns, and genitive constructions with both preceding and following modifiers ("the friend of my father" vs. "my father's friend"). Chinese has the VO order, with verb preceding object, but otherwise is generally head-final.

Various possibilities for ordering are:
 * Relative clause following the head noun, as in English, French or Arabic.
 * Relative clause preceding the head noun, as in Turkish, Japanese, or Chinese.
 * Head noun within the relative clause (an internally headed relative clause). An example of such a language is Navajo. These languages are said to have nonreduced relative clauses. These languages have a structure equivalent to "[I saw the person yesterday] went home".
 * Adjoined relative clause. These languages have the relative clause completely outside the main clause, and use a correlative structure to link the two. These languages also have nonreduced relative clauses. Hindi, the most well-known such language, has a structure similar to "Which person I saw yesterday, that person went home" or (without fronting of the relativized noun in the relative clause) "I saw which person yesterday, that person went home". Another example is Warlpiri, which constructs relative clauses of a form similar to "I saw the man yesterday, which he was going home". However, it is sometimes said these languages have no relative clauses at all, since the sentences of this form can equally well translate as "I saw the man who was going home yesterday" or "I saw the man yesterday when/while he was going home".

Accessibility hierarchy
The antecedent of the relative clause (that is, the noun that is modified by it) can in theory be the subject of the main clause, or its object, or any other verb argument. In many languages, however, especially rigidly left-branching, dependent-marking languages with prenominal relative clauses, there are major restrictions on the role the antecedent may have in the relative clause.

Edward Keenan and Bernard Comrie noted that these roles can be ranked cross-linguistically in the following order from most accessible to least accessible:

 * Subject > Direct Object > Indirect Object > Oblique > Genitive > Object of comparative

Ergative–absolutive languages have a similar hierarchy:

 * Absolutive > Ergative > Indirect Object > etc. (same as above)

This order is called the accessibility hierarchy. If a language can relativize positions lower in the accessibility hierarchy, it can always relativize positions higher up, but not vice versa. For example, Malagasy can relativize only subject and Chukchi only absolutive arguments, whilst Basque can relativize absolutives, ergatives and indirect objects, but not obliques or genitives or objects of comparatives. Similar hierarchies have been proposed in other circumstances, e.g. for pronominal reflexes.

English can relativize all positions in the hierarchy. Here are some examples of the NP and relative clause usage from English:

Some other examples:

Languages that cannot relativize directly on noun phrases low in the accessibility hierarchy can sometimes use alternative voices to "raise" the relevant noun phrase so that it can be relativized. The most common example is the use of applicative voices to relativize obliques, but in such languages as Chukchi antipassives are used to raise ergative arguments to absolutive.

For example, a language that can relativize only subjects could say this: But not: These languages might form an equivalent sentence by passivization: These passivized sentences get progressively more ungrammatical in English as they move down the accessibility hierarchy; the last two, in particular, are so ungrammatical as to be almost unparsable by English speakers. But languages with severe restrictions on which roles can be relativized are precisely those that can passivize almost any position, and hence the last two sentences would be normal in those languages.
 * The girl [who likes me] came to visit.
 * The girl [whom I like] came to visit.
 * The girl [whom I gave a rose to] came to visit.
 * The girl [whom I watched a movie with] came to visit.
 * The girl [whose father I know] came to visit.
 * The girl [whom I know the father of] came to visit. (equivalent to previous)
 * The girl [whom I am taller than] came to visit.
 * The girl [who was liked by me] came to visit.
 * The girl [who was given a rose by me] came to visit.
 * The girl [who was watched a movie with by me] came to visit.
 * The girl [who was known the father of by me] came to visit.
 * The girl [who was been taller than by me] came to visit.

A further example is languages that can relativize only subjects and direct objects. Hence the following would be possible: The other ungrammatical examples above would still be ungrammatical. These languages often allow an oblique object to be moved to the direct object slot by the use of the so-called applicative voice, much as the passive voice moves an oblique object to the subject position. The above examples expressed in an applicative voice might be similar to the following (in not necessarily grammatical English):
 * The girl [who I like] came to visit.
 * The girl [who I gave a rose] came to visit.
 * The girl [who I with-watched a movie] came to visit.
 * The girl [who I (of-)know the father] came to visit.
 * The girl [who I out-tall] came to visit.

Modern grammars may use the accessibility hierarchy to order productions—e.g. in Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar the hierarchy corresponds to the order of elements on the subcat list, and interacts with other principles in explanations of binding facts. The hierarchy also figures in Lexical Functional Grammar, where it is known as Syntactic Rank or the Relational Hierarchy.

English
In English, a relative clause follows the noun it modifies. It is generally indicated by a relative pronoun at the start of the clause, although sometimes simply by word order. If the relative pronoun is the object of the verb in the relative clause, it comes at the beginning of the clause even though it would come at the end of an independent clause ("She is the woman whom I saw", not "She is the woman I saw whom").

The choice of relative pronoun can be affected by whether the clause modifies a human or non-human noun, by whether the clause is restrictive or not, and by the role (subject, direct object, or the like) of the relative pronoun in the relative clause.

 * For a human antecedent, "who", "whom", or "that" is usually used ("She is the person who saw me", "He is the person whom I saw", "He is the person that I saw"). For a non-human antecedent, only "that" or "which" is used.
 * For a non-human antecedent in a non-restrictive clause, only "which" is used ("The tree, which fell, is over there"); while either "which" or "that" may be used in a restrictive clause ("The tree which fell is over there", "The tree that fell is over there")—but some styles and prescriptive grammars require the use of "that" in the restrictive context.
 * Of the relative pronoun pair "who" and "whom", the subjective case form ("who") is used if it is the subject of the relative clause ("She is the police officer who saw me"); and, in formal usage, the objective case form ("whom") if it is the object of the verb or preposition in the relative clause ("She is the police officer whom I saw", "She is the police officer whom I talked to", "She is the officer to whom I talked"); but in informal usage "whom" is often replaced by "who".

In English, as in some other languages (such as French; see below), non-restrictive relative clauses are set off with commas, but restrictive ones are not:

 * "I met a woman and a man yesterday. The woman, who had a thick French accent, was very tall." (non-restrictive—does not narrow down who is being talked about)
 * "I met two women yesterday, one with a thick French accent and one with a mild Italian one. The woman who had the thick French accent was very tall." (restrictive—adds information about who is being referred to)

The status of "that" as a relative pronoun is not universally agreed. Traditional grammars treat "that" as a relative pronoun, but not all contemporary grammars do: e.g. the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (pp. 1056–7) makes a case for treating "that" as a subordinator instead of a relative pronoun; and the British National Corpus treats "that" as a subordinating conjunction even when it introduces relative clauses. One motivation for the different treatment of "that" is that there are differences between "that" and "which" (e.g., one can say "in which" but not "in that", etc.).

French
The system of relative pronouns in French is as complicated as, but similar in many ways to, the system in English.

When the pronoun is to act as the direct object of the relative clause, que is generally used, although lequel, which is inflected for grammatical gender and number, is sometimes used in order to give more precision. For example, any of the following is correct and would translate to "I talked to his/her father and mother, whom I already knew":

 * J'ai parlé avec son père et sa mère, laquelle (f. sing.) je connaissais déjà.
 * J'ai parlé avec son père et sa mère, lesquels (m. pl.) je connaissais déjà.
 * J'ai parlé avec son père et sa mère, que je connaissais déjà.

However, in the first sentence, "whom I already knew" refers only to the mother; in the second, it refers to both parents; and in the third, as in the English sentence, it could refer either only to the mother, or to both parents.

When the pronoun is to act as the subject of the relative clause, qui is generally used, though as before, lequel may be used instead for greater precision. (This is less common than the use of lequel with direct objects, however, since verbs in French often reflect the grammatical number of their subjects.)

Contrary to English, the relative pronoun can never be omitted in French, not even when the relative clause is embedded in another relative clause.
 * Here is what I think Ø happened.
 * Voilà ce que je crois qui est arrivé. (literally: "Here is what I think that happened.")

When the pronoun is to act in a possessive sense, where the preposition de (of/from) would normally be used, the pronoun dont ("whose") is used, but does not act as a determiner for the noun "possessed":

 * J'ai parlé avec une femme dont le fils est mon collègue. ("I spoke with a woman whose son I work with." - lit., "I spoke with a woman of whom the son is my colleague.")

This construction is also used in non-possessive cases where the pronoun replaces an object marked by de:

 * C'est l'homme dont j'ai parlé. ("That's the man of whom I spoke.")

More generally, in modern French, dont can signal the topic of the following clause, without replacing anything in this clause:

 * C'est un homme dont je crois qu'il doit très bien gagner sa vie. ("That's a man about whom I believe that he must make a lot of money.")

When the pronoun is to act as the object of a preposition (other than when dont is used), lequel is generally used, though qui can be used if the antecedent is human.

 * Ce sont des gens sur lesquels on peut compter. ("These are people that can be depended on.") [literally: "on whom one can depend"]
 * Ce sont des gens sur qui on peut compter.

 * C'est une table sur laquelle on peut mettre beaucoup de choses. ("This is a table on which you can put a lot of things".)
 * * C'est une table sur qui on peut mettre beaucoup de choses.

There exists a further complication when the antecedent is a non-human indefinite pronoun. In that case, lequel cannot be used because it must agree in gender with its head, and an indefinite pronoun has no gender. Instead, quoi, which usually means "what", is used.
 * C'est manifestement quelque chose à quoi il a beaucoup réfléchi. ("This is obviously something that he has thought a lot about .")
 * * C'est manifestement quelque chose à laquelle il a beaucoup réfléchi.

The same happens when the antecedent is an entire clause, also lacking gender.
 * Il m'a dit d'aller me faire voir, à quoi j'ai répondu que... ("He told me to get lost, to which I replied that ...")

The preposition always appears before the pronoun, and the prepositions de and à (at/to) contract with lequel to form duquel and auquel, or with lesquel(le)s to form desquel(le)s and auxquel(le)s.

German
Aside from their highly inflected forms, German relative pronouns are less complicated than English. There are two varieties. The more common one is based on the definite article der, die, das, but with distinctive forms in the genitive (dessen, deren) and in the dative plural (denen). Historically this is related to English that. The second, which is more literary and used for emphasis, is the relative use of welcher, welche, welches, comparable with English which. As in most Germanic languages, including Old English, both of these varieties inflect according to gender, case and number. They take their gender and number from the noun which they modify, but the case from their function in their own clause.

 * Das Haus, in dem ich wohne, ist sehr alt.
 * The house in which I live is very old.

The relative pronoun dem is neuter singular to agree with Haus, but dative because it follows a preposition in its own clause. On the same basis, it would be possible to substitute the pronoun welchem.

However, German uses the uninflecting was ('what') as a relative pronoun when the antecedent is alles, etwas or nichts ('everything', 'something', 'nothing').

 * Alles, was Jack macht, gelingt ihm.
 * Everything that Jack does is a success.

In German, all relative clauses are marked with commas.

Alternatively, particularly in formal registers, participles (both active and passive) can be used to embed relative clauses in adjectival phrases:

 * Die von ihm in jenem Stil gemalten Bilder sind sehr begehrt
 * The pictures he painted in that style are highly sought after
 * Die Regierung möchte diese im letzten Jahr eher langsam wachsende Industrie weiter fördern
 * The government would like to further promote this industry, which has grown rather slowly over the last year.

Unlike English, which only permits relatively small participle phrases in adjectival positions (typically just the participle and adverbs), and disallows the use of direct objects for active participles, German sentences of this sort can embed clauses of arbitrary complexity.

Latin
In Latin, relative clauses follow the noun phrases they modify, and are always introduced using relative pronouns. Relative pronouns, like other pronouns in Latin, agree with their antecedents in gender and number, but not in case: a relative pronoun's case reflects its role in the relative clause it introduces, while its antecedent's case reflects the antecedent's role in the clause that contains the relative clause. (Nonetheless, it is possible for the pronoun and antecedent to be in the same case.) For example:

 * Urbēs, quae sunt magnae, videntur. (The cities, which are large, are being seen.'')
 * Urbēs, quās vīdī, erant magnae. (The cities, which I saw, were large.)

In the former example, urbēs and quae both function as subjects in their respective clauses, so both are in the nominative case; and due to gender and number agreement, both are feminine and plural. In the latter example, both are still feminine and plural, and urbēs is still in the nominative case, but quae has been replaced by quās, its accusative-case counterpart, to reflect its role as the direct object of vīdī.

For more information on the forms of Latin relative pronouns, see the section on relative pronouns in the article on Latin declension.

Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek follows (almost) the same rules as Latin.

However, there is a phenomenon in Ancient Greek called case attraction, where the case of the relative pronoun can be "attracted" to the case of its antecedent.

In this example, although the relative pronoun should be in the accusative case, as the object of "obtain", it is attracted to the genitive case of its antecedent ("of the freedom...").

The Ancient Greek relative pronoun ὅς, ἥ, ὅ (hós, hḗ, hó) is unrelated to the Latin word, since it derives from Proto-Indo-European : in Proto-Greek, y before a vowel usually changed to h (debuccalization). Cognates include Sanskrit relative pronouns yas, yā, yad (where o changed to short a).

The Greek definite article ὁ, ἡ, τό (ho, hē, tó) has a different origin, since it is related to the Sanskrit demonstrative sa, sā and Latin is-tud.

Information that in English would be encoded with relative clauses could be represented with complex participles in Ancient Greek. This was made particularly expressive by the rich suite of participles available, with active and passive participles in present, past and future tenses. This is called the attributive participle.

Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian uses exactly the same principle as Latin does. The following sentences are the Latin examples translated to Serbo-Croatian (the same sentences apply to the Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin standard variants of the pluricentric language):

Gradovi, koji su veliki, vide se.

{the cities:NOM.M.PL} which:NOM.M.PL are:PR.3.PL large:NOM.M.PL see:PR.3.PL itself:REFL

"The cities, which are large, are being seen."

Gradovi, koje sam vidio, bili su veliki.

{the cities:NOM.M.PL} which:ACC.M.PL {I am:AUX.1.SG} saw:AP.M.SG were:AP.M.PL are:AUX.3.PL large:NOM.M.PL

"The cities, which I saw, were large."

In the first sentence, koji is in the nominative, and in the second koje is in the accusative. Both words are two case forms of the same relative pronoun, that is inflicted for gender (here: masculine), number (here: plural), and case.

An alternative relativizing strategy is the use of the non-declinable word što 'that' to introduce a relative clause. This word is used together with a resumptive pronoun, i.e. a personal pronoun that agrees in gender and number with the antecedent, while its case form depends on its function in the relative clause. The resumptive pronoun never appears in subject function.

Onaj poznanik što si ga pozdravio...

that:NOM.M.SG acquaintance:NOM.M.SG that be:AUX.2.SG him:ACC greet:AP.M.SG

"That acquaintance that (whom) you have said 'hello' to..."

Relative clauses are relatively frequent in modern Serbo-Croatian since they have expanded as attributes at the expense of the participles performing that function. The most frequently used relative pronoun is koji. There are several ongoing changes concerning koji. One of them is the spread of the genitive-accusative syncretism to the masculine inanimate of the pronoun. The cause lies in the necessity to disambiguate the subject and the object by morphological means. The nominative-accusative syncretism of the form koji is inadequate, so the genitive form kojeg is preferred:

Auto koji je udario autobus

car:NOM/ACC.M.SG which:NOM/ACC.M.SG be:AUX.3.SG hit:AP.M.SG bus:NOM/ACC.M.SG

Auto kojeg je udario autobus

car:NOM/ACC.M.SG which:ACC/GEN.M.SG be:AUX.3.SG hit:AP.M.SG bus:NOM/ACC.M.SG

"Car hit by bus"

Celtic languages
The Celtic languages (at least the modern Insular Celtic languages) distinguish two types of relative clause: direct relative clauses and indirect relative clauses. A direct relative clause is used where the relativized element is the subject or the direct object of its clause (e.g. "the man who saw me", "the man whom I saw"), while an indirect relative clause is used where the relativized element is a genitival (e.g. "the man whose daughter is in the hospital") or is the object of a preposition (e.g. "the man to whom I gave the book"). Direct relative clauses are formed with a relative pronoun (unmarked for case) at the beginning; a gap (in terms of syntactic theory, a trace, indicated by (t) in the examples below) is left in the relative clause at the pronoun's expected position.

an fear a chonaic (t) mé
 * Irish

the man DIR-REL saw {} me

"the man who saw me"

y dyn a welais
 * Welsh

the man DIR-REL {I saw}

"the man whom I saw"

The direct relative particle "a" is not used with "mae" ("is") in Welsh; instead the form "sydd" or "sy'" is used:

y dyn sy'n blewog iawn

the man {DIR-REL + is} hairy very

"the man who is very hairy"

There is also a defective verb "piau" (usually lenited to "biau"), corresponding to "who own(s)":

y dyn piau castell anferth

the man {DIR-REL + owns} castle huge

"the man who owns a huge castle"

Indirect relative clauses are formed with a relativizer at the beginning; the relativized element remains in situ in the relative clause.

an fear a bhfuil a iníon san ospidéal
 * Irish

the man IND-REL is his daughter {in the} hospital

"the man whose daughter is in the hospital" y dyn y rhois y llyfr iddo
 * Welsh

the man IND-REL {I gave} the book {to him}

"the man to whom I gave the book"

Although both the Irish relative pronoun and the relativizer are 'a', the relative pronoun triggers lenition of a following consonant, while the relativizer triggers eclipsis (see Irish initial mutations).

Both direct and indirect relative particles can be used simply for emphasis, often in answer to a question or as a way of disagreeing with a statement. For instance, the Welsh example above, "y dyn a welais" means not only "the man whom I saw", but also "it was the man (and not anyone else) I saw"; and "y dyn y rhois y llyfr iddo" can likewise mean "it was the man (and not anyone else) to whom I gave the book".

Hebrew
In Biblical Hebrew, relative clauses were headed with the word asher, which could be either a relative pronoun or a relativizer. In later times, asher became interchangeable with the prefix she- (which is also used as a conjunction, with the sense of English that), and in Modern Hebrew, this use of she- is much more common than asher, except in some formal, archaic, or poetic writing. In meaning, the two are interchangeable; they are used regardless of whether the clause is modifying a human, regardless of their grammatical case in the relative clause, and regardless of whether the clause is restrictive.

Further, because Hebrew does not generally use its word for is, she- is used to distinguish adjective phrases used in epithet from adjective phrases used in attribution:

 * Ha-kise l'-yad-ekh. ("The chair is next to you." - lit., "The-chair [is] next-to-you.")
 * Ha-kise she-l'-yad-ekh shavur. ("The chair next to you is broken."—lit., "The-chair that-[is]-next-to-you [is] broken.")

(This use of she- does not occur with simple adjectives, as Hebrew has a different way of making that distinction. For example, Ha-kise adom means "The chair [is] red", while Ha-kis'e ha-adom shavur means "The red chair is broken"—literally, "The chair the red [is] broken.")

Since 1994, the official rules of Modern Hebrew (as determined by the Academy of the Hebrew Language) have stated that relative clauses are to be punctuated in Hebrew the same way as in English (described above). That is, non-restrictive clauses are to be set off with commas, while restrictive clauses are not:

 * Ha-kise, she-at yoshevet alav, shavur. ("The chair, which you are sitting on, is broken.")
 * Ha-kise she-at yoshevet alav shavur. ("The chair that you are sitting on is broken.")

Nonetheless, many speakers of Modern Hebrew still use the pre-1994 rules, which were based on the German rules (described above). Except for the simple adjective-phrase clauses described above, these speakers set off all relative clauses, restrictive or not, with commas:

 * Ha-kise, she-at yoshevet alav, shavur. ("The chair that you are sitting on is broken," or "The chair, which you are sitting on, is broken.")

One major difference between relative clauses in Hebrew and those in (for example) English is that in Hebrew, what might be called the "regular" pronoun is not always suppressed in the relative clause. To reuse the prior example:

 * Ha-kise, she-at yoshevet alav, shavur. (lit., "The chair, which you are sitting on it, [is] broken.")

More specifically, if this pronoun is the subject of the relative clause, it is always suppressed. If it is the direct object, then it is usually suppressed, though it is also correct to leave it in. (If it is suppressed, then the special preposition et, used to mark the direct object, is suppressed as well.) If it is the object of a preposition, it must be left in, because in Hebrew—unlike in English—a preposition cannot appear without its object. When the pronoun is left in, she- might more properly be called a relativizer than a relative pronoun.

The Hebrew relativizer she- 'that' "might be a shortened form of the Hebrew relativizer ‘asher 'that', which is related to Akkadian ‘ashru 'place' (cf. Semitic *‘athar). Alternatively, Hebrew ‘asher derived from she-, or it was a convergence of Proto-Semitic dhu (cf. Aramaic dī) and ‘asher [...] Whereas Israeli she- functions both as complementizer and relativizer, ashér can only function as a relativize."

Literary Arabic
In Modern Standard and Classical Arabic there is a relative pronoun (in Arabic: الاسم الموصول ) allaḏī (masculine singular), feminine singular allatī, masculine plural allaḏīna, feminine plural allawātī, masculine dual allaḏānī (nominative) / allaḏayni (accusative and genitive), feminine dual allatānī (nom.) / allataynī (acc. and gen.).

Its usage has two specific rules: it agrees with the antecedent in gender, number and case, and it is used only if the antecedent is definite. If the antecedent is indefinite, no relative pronoun is used. The former is called jumlat sila (conjunctive sentence) while the latter is called jumlat sifa (descriptive sentence).

Colloquial Arabic
In Colloquial Arabic the multiple forms of the relative pronoun have been levelled in favour of a single form, a simple conjunction, which in most dialects is illi, and is never omitted. So in Palestinian Arabic the above sentences would be:

 * alwalad illi shuftō fi (a)ssaff embārih ghāyeb alyōm
 * hāda walad illi shuftō fi (a)ssaff embārih

As in Hebrew, the regular pronoun referring to the antecedent is repeated in the relative clause - literally, "the boy whom I saw him in class..." (the -hu in ra'aituhu and the -ō in shuftō). The rules of suppression in Arabic are identical to those of Hebrew: obligatory suppression in the case that the pronoun is the subject of the relative clause, obligatory retention in the case that the pronoun is the object of a preposition, and at the discretion of the speaker if the pronoun is the direct object. The only difference from Hebrew is that, in the case of the direct object, it is preferable to retain the pronoun rather than suppress it.

Japanese
Japanese does not employ relative pronouns to relate relative clauses to their antecedents. Instead, the relative clause directly modifies the noun phrase as an attributive verb, occupying the same syntactic space as an attributive adjective (before the noun phrase).

In fact, since so-called i-adjectives in Japanese can be analyzed as intransitive stative verbs, it can be argued that the structure of the first example (with an adjective) is the same as the others. A number of "adjectival" meanings, in Japanese, are customarily shown with relative clauses consisting solely of a verb or a verb complex:

Often confusing to speakers of languages which use relative pronouns are relative clauses which would in their own languages require a preposition with the pronoun to indicate the semantic relationship among the constituent parts of the phrase.

Here, the preposition "in" is missing from the Japanese ("missing" in the sense that the corresponding postposition would be used with the main clause verb in Japanese). Common sense indicates what the meaning is in this case, but the "missing preposition" can sometimes create ambiguity.

In this case, (1) is the context-free interpretation of choice, but (2) is possible with the proper context.

Without more context, both (1) and (2) are equally viable interpretations of the Japanese sentence.

Georgian
In Georgian, there are two strategies for forming relative clauses. The first is similar to that of English or Latin: the modified noun is followed by a relativizer that inflects for its embedded case and may take a postposition. The relativized noun may be preceded by a determiner.

A second, more colloquial, strategy is marked by the invariant particle რომ rom. This particle is generally the second word of the clause, and since it does not decline, is often followed by the appropriately cased third-person pronoun to show the relativized noun's role in the embedded clause. A determiner precedes the relativized noun, which is also usually preceded by the clause as a whole.

Such relative clauses may be internally headed. In such cases, the modified noun moves into the clause, taking the appropriate declension for its role therein (thus eliminating the need for the third person pronouns in the above examples), and leaves behind the determiner (which now functions as a pronoun) in the matrix clause.

Indonesian
Indonesian, a zero-copula language that does not mark verb tense, allows a variety of types of relative clause, normally restrictive. They are usually introduced by the relative pronoun yang, which stands for "who"/"which"/"what"/"that".

orang yang membangun rumah itu

person who build house that

"the person who built/is building that house"

Yang is not allowed as the object of a relative clause, so that Indonesian cannot exactly reproduce structures such as "the house that Jack built". Instead, a passive form of construction must be used:

rumah yang dibangun {} Jack

house that built [by] Jack

Relative clauses with no antecedent to yang are possible:

yang paling mengejutkan warnanya

what most surprising its-colour

"what is most surprising is its colour"

yang didengarnya mengejutkan sekali

what heard-by-him surprising very

"what he heard was very surprising"

Tagalog
Tagalog uses the gapping strategy to form relative clauses, with the complementizer, na / =ng 'that', separating the head, which is the noun being modified, from the actual relative clause. In (1a) below, lalaki 'man' serves as the head, while nagbigay ng bigas sa bata 'gave rice to the child' is the relative clause.

man COMP ACT.gave {} ACC rice DAT child

"man that gave rice to the child"

Nagbigay ang lalaki ng bigas sa bata.

ACT.gave NOM man ACC rice DAT child

"The man gave rice to the child."

The gap inside the relative clause corresponds to the position that the noun acting as the head would have normally taken, had it been in a declarative sentence. In (1a), the gap is in subject position within the relative clause. This corresponds to the subject position occupied by ang lalaki 'the man' in the declarative sentence in (1b).

There is a constraint in Tagalog on the position from which a noun can be relativized and in which a gap can appear: A noun has to be the subject within the relative clause in order for it to be relativized. The phrases in (2) are ungrammatical because the nouns that have been relativized are not the subjects of their respective relative clauses. In (2a), the gap is in direct object position, while in (2b), the gap is in indirect object position.

 * bigas na nagbigay ang lalaki ____ sa bata

{} rice COMP ACT.gave NOM man {} DAT child

for: "rice that the man gave to the child"

 * bata =ng nagbigay ang lalaki ng bigas ____

{} child COMP ACT.gave NOM man ACC rice {}

for: "child that the man gave rice to"

The correct Tagalog translations for the intended meanings in (2) are found in (3), where the verbs have been passivized in order to raise the logical direct object in (3a) and the logical indirect object in (3b) to subject position. (Tagalog can have more than one passive voice form for any given verb.)

bigas na ibinigay ng lalaki sa bata

rice COMP PAS.gave GEN man DAT child

"rice that the man gave to the child" (or: "rice that was given to the child by the man")

child COMP gave.PAS GEN man ACC rice

"child that the man gave rice to" (or: "child that was given rice to by the man")

Tagalog relative clauses can be left-headed, as in (1a) and (3), right-headed, as in (4), or internally headed, as in (5).

nagbigay ng bigas sa bata na lalaki

ACT.gave ACC rice DAT child COMP man

"man that gave rice to the child"

nagbigay na lalaki ng bigas sa bata

ACT.gave COMP man ACC rice DAT child

"man that gave rice to the child"

nagbigay ng bigas na lalaki sa bata

ACT.gave ACC rice COMP man DAT child

"man that gave rice to the child"

In (4), the head, lalaki 'man', is found after or to the right of the relative clause, nagbigay ng bigas sa bata 'gave rice to the child'. In (5), the head is found in some position inside the relative clause. When the head appears to the right of or internally to the relative clause, the complementizer appears to the left of the head. When the head surfaces to the left of the relative clause, the complementizer surfaces to the right of the head.

There are exceptions to the subjects-only constraint to relativization mentioned above. The first involves relativizing the possessor of a noun phrase within the relative clause.

child COMP injured.PAS NOM finger {}

"child whose finger was injured"

In (6), the head, bata 'child', is the owner of the injured finger. The phrase ang daliri 'the finger' is the subject of the verb, nasugatan 'was injured'.

Another exception involves relativizing the oblique noun phrase.

ospital (na) kung saan ipinanganak si Juan

hospital COMP Q-COMP where PAS.bore NOM Juan

"hospital where Juan was born"

Nagtanong siya kung saan ipinanganak si Juan.

ACT.asked 3SG.NOM Q-COMP where PAS.bore NOM Juan

"She asked where Juan was born."

Ipinanganak si Juan sa ospital.

PAS.bore NOM Juan LOC hospital

"Juan was born at the hospital."

Saan ipinanganak si Juan?

where PAS.bore NOM Juan

"Where was Juan born?"

When an oblique noun phrase is relativized, as in (7a), na 'that', the complementizer that separates the head from the relative clause, is optional. The relative clause itself is also composed differently. In the examples in (1a), and in (3) to (6), the relative clauses are simple declaratives that contain a gap. However, the relative clause in (7a) looks more like an indirect question, complete with the interrogative complementizer, kung 'if', and a pre-verbally positioned WH-word like saan 'where', as in (7b). The sentence in (7c) is the declarative version of the relative clause in (7a), illustrating where the head, ospital 'hospital', would have been "before" relativization. The question in (7d) shows the direct question version of the subordinate indirect question in (7b).

Hawaiian
Relative clauses in Hawaiian are avoided unless they are short.

If in English a relative clause would have a copula and an adjective, in Hawaiian the antecedent is simply modified by the adjective: "The honest man" instead of "the man who is honest". If the English relative clause would have a copula and a noun, in Hawaiian an appositive is used instead: "Paul, an apostle" instead of "Paul, who was an apostle".

If the English relative pronoun would be the subject of an intransitive or passive verb, in Hawaiian a participle is used instead of a full relative clause: "the people fallen" instead of "the people who fell"; "the thing given" instead of "the thing that was given". But when the relative clause's antecedent is a person, the English relative pronoun would be the subject of the relative clause, and the relative clause's verb is active and transitive, a relative clause is used and it begins with the relative pronoun nana: The one who me (past) sent = "the one who sent me".

If in English a relative pronoun would be the object of a relative clause, in Hawaiian the possessive form is used so as to treat the antecedent as something possessed: the things of me to have seen = "the things that I saw"; Here is theirs to have seen = This is what they saw".

Aymara
thuquñap punchu

dance-INF-3.POSS poncho

"the poncho he is dancing with"

Mandarin
In Mandarin Chinese, the relative clause is similar to other adjectival phrases in that it precedes the noun that it modifies, and ends with the relative particle de (的). If the relative clause is missing a subject but contains an object (in other words, if the verb is transitive), the main-clause noun is the implied subject of the relative clause:

If the object but not the subject is missing from the relative clause, the main-clause noun is the implied object of the relative clause:

If both the subject and the object are missing from the relative clause, then the main-clause noun could either be the implied subject or the implied object of the relative clause; sometimes which is intended is clear from the context, especially when the subject or object of the verb must be human and the other must be non-human:

But sometimes ambiguity arises when it is not clear from the context whether the main-clause noun is intended as the subject or the object of the relative clause:

However, the first meaning (in which the main-clause noun is the subject) is usually intended, as the second can be unambiguously stated using a passive voice marker:

Sometimes a relative clause has both a subject and an object specified, in which case the main-clause noun is the implied object of an implied preposition in the relative clause:

It is also possible to include the preposition explicitly in the relative clause, but in that case it takes a pronoun object (a personal pronoun with the function of a relative pronoun):

Free relative clauses are formed in the same way, omitting the modified noun after the particle de. As with bound relative clauses, ambiguity may arise; for example, "eat (particle)" may mean "that which is eaten", i.e. "food", or "those who eat".

Hawaiian Creole English
In Hawaiian Creole English, an English-based creole also called Hawaiian Pidgin or simply Pidgin, relative clauses work in a way that is similar to, but not identical to, the way they work in English. As in English, a relative pronoun that serves as the object of the verb in the relative clause can optionally be omitted: For example,

Ai neva si da buk daet Lisa wen bai

I never see the book that Lisa (past) buy

I didn't see the book that Lisa bought

can also be expressed with the relative pronoun omitted, as

Ai neva si da buk Lisa wen bai

I never see the book Lisa (past) buy

I didn't see the book Lisa bought

However, relative pronouns serving as the subject of a relative clause show more flexibility than in English; they can be included, as is mandatory in English, they can be omitted, or they can be replaced by another pronoun. For example, all of the following can occur and all mean the same thing:

Get wan nada grl hu no kaen ste stil

There's one other girl who no can stay still

There's another girl who cannot stay still

Get wan nada grl no kaen ste stil

There's one other girl no can stay still

Get wan nada grl shi no kaen ste stil

There's one other girl she no can stay still

Gullah
In Gullah, an English-based creole spoken along the southeastern coast of the United States, no relative pronoun is normally used for the subject of a relative clause. For example:

Duh him cry out so

It him cry out so

It's he who cries out so

Enty duh dem shum dey?

Ain't it them {saw him} there?

Isn't it they who saw him there?

title: Relative clause


text:
Grumman TBF Avenger

The Grumman TBF Avenger (designated TBM for aircraft manufactured by General Motors) is an American World War II-era torpedo bomber developed initially for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, and eventually used by several air and naval aviation services around the world.

The Avenger entered U.S. service in 1942, and first saw action during the Battle of Midway. Despite the loss of five of the six Avengers on its combat debut, it survived in service to become the most effective submarine killer and most widely-used torpedo bomber of World War II, sharing credit for sinking the super-battleships JAPANESE BATTLESHIP Yamato and JAPANESE BATTLESHIP Musashi  and being credited for sinking 30 submarines. Greatly modified after the war, it remained in use until the 1960s.

Design and development

The Douglas TBD Devastator, the U.S. Navy's main torpedo bomber introduced in 1935, was obsolete by 1939. Bids were accepted from several companies, but Grumman's TBF design was selected as the replacement for the TBD and in April 1940 two prototypes were ordered by the Navy. Designed by Leroy Grumman, the first prototype was called the XTBF-1. It was first flown on 7 August 1941. Although one of the first two prototypes crashed near Brentwood, New York, rapid production continued.

To ease carrier storage concerns, simultaneously with the F4F-4 model of its Wildcat carrier fighter, Grumman designed the Avenger to also use the new Sto-Wing patented "compound angle" wing-folding mechanism, intended to maximize storage space on an aircraft carrier; the Wildcat's replacement, the F6F Hellcat, also employed this mechanism. The engine used was the twin-row Wright R-2600-20 Twin Cyclone fourteen-cylinder radial engine, which produced 1900 hp.

There were three crew members: pilot, turret gunner and radioman/bombardier/ventral gunner. A single synchronized .30 caliber (7.62 mm) machine gun was mounted in the nose, a .50 caliber (12.7 mm) gun was mounted right next to the turret gunner's head in a rear-facing electrically powered turret, and a single 0.30 caliber (7.62 mm) hand-fired machine gun flexibly-mounted ventrally (under the tail), which was used to defend against enemy fighters attacking from below and to the rear. This gun was fired by the radioman/bombardier while standing up and bending over in the belly of the tail section, though he usually sat on a folding bench facing forward to operate the radio and to sight in bombing runs. Later models of the TBF/TBM omitted the cowl-mount synchronized 0.30 caliber (7.62 mm) gun, and replaced it with twin Browning AN/M2 0.50 caliber (12.7 mm) light-barrel guns, one in each wing outboard of the propeller arc, per pilots' requests for better forward firepower and increased strafing ability. There was only one set of controls on the aircraft, and no direct access to the pilot's position existed from the rest of the aircraft's interior. The radio equipment was massive, especially by today's standards, and filled the length of the well-framed "greenhouse" canopy to the rear of the pilot. The radios were accessible for repair through a "tunnel" along the right hand side. Any Avengers that are still flying today usually have an additional rear-mounted seat in place of the radios, allowing for a fourth passenger.

The Avenger had a large bomb bay, allowing for one Bliss-Leavitt Mark 13 torpedo, a single 2000 lb bomb, or up to four 500 lb bombs. The aircraft had overall ruggedness and stability, and pilots say it flew like a truck, for better or worse. With its good radio facilities, docile handling, and long range, the Grumman Avenger also made an ideal command aircraft for Commanders, Air Group (CAGs). With a 30000 ft ceiling and a fully loaded range of 1000 mi, it was better than any previous American torpedo bomber, and better than its Japanese counterpart, the obsolete Nakajima B5N "Kate". Later Avenger models carried radar equipment for the ASW and AEW roles.

Escort carrier sailors referred to the TBF as the "turkey" because of its size and maneuverability in comparison to the F4F Wildcat fighters in the same airgroups.

U.S. Navy

On the afternoon of 7 December 1941, Grumman held a ceremony to open a new manufacturing plant and display the new TBF to the public. Coincidentally, on that day, the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor, as Grumman soon found out. After the ceremony was over, the plant was quickly sealed off to guard against possible sabotage. By early June 1942, a shipment of more than 100 aircraft was sent to the Navy, arriving only a few hours after the three carriers quickly departed from Pearl Harbor, so most of them were too late to participate in the pivotal Battle of Midway.

Six TBF-1s were present on Midway Island – as part of VT-8 (Torpedo Squadron 8) – while the rest of the squadron flew Devastators from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-8). Both types of torpedo bombers suffered heavy casualties. Out of the six Avengers, five were shot down and the other returned heavily damaged with one of its gunners killed, and the other gunner and the pilot wounded.

Author Gordon Prange posited in Miracle at Midway that the outdated Devastators (and lack of new aircraft) contributed somewhat to the lack of a complete victory at Midway (the four Japanese fleet carriers were sunk directly by dive bombers instead). Others pointed out that the inexperienced American pilots and lack of fighter cover were responsible for poor showing of US torpedo bombers, regardless of type. Later in the war, with growing American air superiority, better attack coordination and more veteran pilots, Avengers were able to play vital roles in the subsequent battles against Japanese surface forces.

On 24 August 1942, the next major naval aircraft carrier battle occurred at the Eastern Solomons. Based on the carriers USS Saratoga (CV-3) and USS Enterprise (CV-6), the 24 TBFs present were able to sink the Japanese light carrier JAPANESE AIRCRAFT CARRIER Ryūjō and claim one dive bomber, at the cost of seven aircraft.

The first major "prize" for the TBFs (which had been assigned the name "Avenger" in October 1941, before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor) was at the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal in November 1942, when Marine Corps and Navy Avengers helped sink the Japanese battleship JAPANESE BATTLESHIP Hiei, which had already been crippled the night before.

After hundreds of the original TBF-1 models were built, the TBF-1C began production. The allotment of space for specialized internal and wing-mounted fuel tanks doubled the Avenger's range. By 1943, Grumman began to slowly phase out production of the Avenger to produce F6F Hellcat fighters, and the Eastern Aircraft Division of General Motors took over production, with these aircraft being designated TBM. The Eastern Aircraft plant was located in Ewing, New Jersey. Grumman delivered a TBF-1, held together with sheet metal screws, so that the automotive engineers could disassemble it, one part at a time, and redesign the aircraft for automotive-style production. This aircraft was known as the "P-K Avenger" ("P-K" being an abbreviation for Parker-Kalon, manufacturer of sheet metal screws). Starting in mid-1944, the TBM-3 began production (with a more powerful powerplant and wing hardpoints for drop tanks and rockets). The dash-3 was the most numerous of the Avengers (with about 4,600 produced). However, most of the Avengers in service were dash-1s until near the end of the war in 1945.

Besides the traditional surface role (torpedoing surface ships), Avengers claimed about 30 submarine kills, including the cargo submarine JAPANESE SUBMARINE I-52. They were one of the most effective sub-killers in the Pacific theater, as well as in the Atlantic, when escort carriers were finally available to escort Allied convoys. There, the Avengers contributed to the warding off of German U-boats while providing air cover for the convoys.

After the "Marianas Turkey Shoot", in which more than 250 Japanese aircraft were downed, Admiral Marc Mitscher ordered a 220-aircraft mission to find the Japanese task force. Fighting 300 nmi away from the fleet at the extreme end of their range, the group of Hellcats, TBF/TBMs, and dive bombers took many casualties. However, Avengers from the Independence-class aircraft carrier USS Belleau Wood (CVL-24) sank the light carrier JAPANESE AIRCRAFT CARRIER Hiyō as their only major prize. Mitscher's gamble did not pay off as well as he had hoped.

In June 1943, shortly before his 19th birthday, future-president, George H. W. Bush, was commissioned as the youngest naval aviator at the time. Later, while flying a TBM with VT-51 (from USS San Jacinto (CVL-30)), his Avenger was shot down on 2 September 1944 over the Pacific island of Chichi Jima. However, he released his payload and hit the radio tower target before being forced to bail out over water. Both of his crewmates died. He was rescued at sea by the American submarine USS Finback (SS-230). He later received the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Another famous Avenger aviator was Paul Newman, who flew as a rear gunner. He had hoped to be accepted for pilot training, but did not qualify because he was color blind. Newman was on board the escort carrier USS Hollandia (CVE-97) roughly 500 mi from Japan when the Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

The Avenger was the type of torpedo bomber used during the sinking of the two Japanese "super battleships", with the US Navy having complete air superiority in both engagements: JAPANESE BATTLESHIP Musashi and JAPANESE BATTLESHIP Yamato.

The postwar disappearance on 5 December 1945 of a flight of five American Avengers, known as Flight 19, was later added to the Bermuda Triangle legend, first written about by Edward Van Winkle Jones in an Associated Press article published in September 1950.

During World War II, the US aeronautical research arm NACA used a complete Avenger in a comprehensive drag-reduction study in their large Langley wind tunnel.

Royal Navy

The Avenger was also used by the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm, where it was initially known as the "Tarpon". Initial test flights were carried out by British Admiralty test pilot Roy Sydney Baker-Falkner at RAF Boscombe Down. However, this name was later discontinued and the Avenger name used instead, as part of the process of the Fleet Air Arm universally adopting the U.S. Navy's names for American naval aircraft. The first 402 aircraft were known as Avenger Mk I, 334 TBM-1s from Grumman were called the Avenger Mk II, and 334 TBM-3 were designated the Mk III. An interesting kill by a Royal Navy Avenger was the destruction of a V-1 flying bomb on 9 July 1944. The much faster V-1 was overtaking the Avenger when the Telegraphist Air Gunner in the dorsal turret, Leading Airman Fred Shirmer, fired at it from 700 yd. For this achievement, Shirmer was Mentioned in Dispatches, later being awarded the DSM for the 1945 Operation Meridian action at Palembang. In the January 1945 British carrier raid on the Soengei Gerong oil refinery during Operation Meridian, a Fleet Air Arm Avenger shot down a Nakajima Ki-44 "Tojo" in low level combat over the jungle. Three Avengers were modified to carry the Highball "bouncing bomb" (given the new codename Tammany Hall), but when trials were unsuccessful, they were returned to standard configuration and passed to the Royal Navy.

One hundred USN TBM-3Es were supplied to the Fleet Air Arm in 1953 under the US Mutual Defense Assistance Program. The aircraft were shipped from Norfolk, Virginia, many aboard the Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Perseus (R51). The Avengers were fitted with British equipment by Scottish Aviation and delivered as the Avenger AS.4 to several FAA squadrons including No. 767, 814, 815, 820 and 824. The aircraft were replaced from 1954 by Fairey Gannets and were passed to squadrons of the Royal Naval Reserve including No. 1841 and 1844 until the RNR Air Branch was disbanded in 1957. The survivors were transferred to the French Navy in 1957–1958.

Royal New Zealand Air Force
The only other operator in World War II was the Royal New Zealand Air Force which used the type primarily as a bomber, equipping Nos. 30 and 31 Squadrons, with both operating from South Pacific island bases during 1944 in support of the Bougainville campaign. Some of the Avengers were later transferred to the British Pacific Fleet.

In 1945, Avengers were involved in pioneering trials of aerial topdressing in New Zealand that led to the establishment of an industry which markedly increased food production and efficiency in farming worldwide. Pilots of the Royal New Zealand Air Force's No. 42 Squadron spread fertilizer from Avengers beside runways at Ohakea Air Base and provided a demonstration for farmers at Hood Aerodrome, Masterton, New Zealand.

Royal Canadian Navy

One of the primary postwar users of the Avenger was the Royal Canadian Navy, which obtained 125 former US Navy TBM-3E Avengers from 1950 to 1952 to replace their venerable Fairey Fireflies. By the time the Avengers were delivered, the RCN was shifting its primary focus to anti-submarine warfare (ASW), and the aircraft was rapidly becoming obsolete as an attack platform. Consequently, 98 of the RCN Avengers were fitted with an extensive number of novel ASW modifications, including radar, electronic countermeasures (ECM) equipment, and sonobuoys, and the upper ball turret was replaced with a sloping glass canopy that was better suited for observation duties. The modified Avengers were designated AS 3. A number of these aircraft were later fitted with a large magnetic anomaly detector (MAD) boom on the rear left side of the fuselage and were redesignated AS 3M. However, RCN leaders soon realized the Avenger's shortcomings as an ASW aircraft, and in 1954 they elected to replace the AS 3 with the Grumman S-2 Tracker, which offered longer range, greater load-carrying capacity for electronics and armament, and a second engine, a great safety benefit when flying long-range ASW patrols over frigid North Atlantic waters. As delivery of the new license-built CS2F Trackers began in 1957, the Avengers were shifted to training duties, and were officially retired in July 1960.

Camouflage research
TBM Avengers were used in wartime research into counter-illumination camouflage. The torpedo bombers were fitted with Yehudi lights, a set of forward-pointing lights automatically adjusted to match the brightness of the sky. The planes therefore appeared as bright as the sky, rather than as dark shapes. The technology, a development of the Canadian navy's diffused lighting camouflage research, allowed an Avenger to advance to within 3000 yd before being seen.

Civilian use
Many Avengers have survived into the 21st century working as spray-applicators and water-bombers throughout North America, particularly in the Canadian province of New Brunswick.

Forest Protection Limited (FPL) of Fredericton, New Brunswick, once owned and operated the largest civilian fleet of Avengers in the world. FPL began operating Avengers in 1958 after purchasing 12 surplus TBM-3E aircraft from the Royal Canadian Navy. Use of the Avenger fleet at FPL peaked in 1971 when 43 aircraft were in use as both water bombers and spray aircraft. The company sold three Avengers in 2004 (C-GFPS, C-GFPM, and C-GLEJ) to museums or private collectors. The Central New Brunswick Woodsmen's Museum has a former FPL Avenger on static display. An FPL Avenger that crashed in 1975 in southwestern New Brunswick was recovered and restored by a group of interested aviation enthusiasts and is currently on display at the Atlantic Canada Aviation Museum. FPL was still operating three Avengers in 2010 configured as water-bombers, and stationed at Miramichi Airport. One of these crashed just after takeoff on 23 April 2010, killing the pilot. The last FPL Avenger was retired on 26 July 2012 and sold to the Shearwater Aviation Museum in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

There are several other Avengers, usually flying as warbirds in private collections around the world today. They are a popular airshow fixture in both flying and static displays.

the Commemorative Air Force (CAF) flies three TBM Avengers with one based with the Rocky Mountain Wing in Grand Junction, Colorado; another with the Missouri Wing at St Charles Smartt Field; and their newest with the Capital Wing in Culpeper, Virginia. Each of these allow non-CAF members to ride in the aircraft for a Living History Flight Experience.

TBF

 * XTBF-1
 * Prototypes each powered by a 1700 hp R-2600-8 engine, second aircraft introduced the large dorsal fin. (2 built)

 * TBF-1
 * Initial production model based on the second prototype. (1,526 built)

 * TBF-1C
 * TBF-1 with provision for two 0.5 in wing guns and fuel capacity increased to 726 gal. (765 built)

 * TBF-1B
 * Paper designation for the Avenger I for the Royal Navy.

 * TBF-1D
 * TBF-1 conversions with centimetric radar in radome on right wing leading edge.

 * TBF-1CD
 * TBF-1C conversions with centimetric radar in radome on right wing leading edge.

 * TBF-1E
 * TBF-1 conversions with additional electronic equipment.

 * TBF-1J
 * TBF-1 equipped for bad weather operations

 * TBF-1L
 * TBF-1 equipped with retractable searchlight in bomb bay.

 * TBF-1P
 * TBF-1 conversion for photo-reconnaissance

 * TBF-1CP
 * TBF-1C conversion for photo-reconnaissance

 * XTBF-2
 * TBF-1 re-engined with a 1900 hp XR-2600-10 engine.

 * XTBF-3
 * TBF-1 re-engined with 1900 hp R-2600-20 engines.

 * TBF-3
 * Planned production version of the XTBF-3, cancelled

TBM

 * TBM-1
 * as TBF-1. (550 built)

 * TBM-1C
 * as TBF-1C. (2336 built)

 * TBM-1D
 * TBM-1 conversions with centimetric radar in radome on right wing leading edge.

 * TBM-1E
 * TBM-1 conversions with additional electronic equipment.

 * TBM-1J
 * TBM-1 equipped for all weather operations

 * TBM-1L
 * TBM-1 equipped with retractable searchlight in bomb bay.

 * TBM-1P
 * TBM-1 conversion for photo-reconnaissance

 * TBM-1CP
 * TBM-1C conversion for photo-reconnaissance

 * TBM-2
 * One TBM-1 re-engined with a 1900 hp XR-2600-10 engine.

 * XTBM-3
 * Four TBM-1C aircraft with 1900 hp R-2600-20 engines.

 * TBM-3
 * as TBM-1C, double cooling intakes, engine upgrade, minor changes. (4,011 built)

 * TBM-3D
 * TBM-3 conversion with centimetric radar in radome on right wing leading edge.

 * TBM-3E
 * as TBM-3, stronger airframe, search radar, ventral gun deleted. (646 built).

 * TBM-3H
 * TBM-3 conversion with surface search radar.

 * TBM-3J
 * TBM-3 equipped for all weather operations

 * TBM-3L
 * TBM-3 equipped with retractable searchlight in bomb bay.

 * TBM-3M
 * TBM-3 conversion as a Tiny Tim rocket launcher.

 * TBM-3N
 * TBM-3 conversion for night attack.

 * TBM-3P
 * TBM-3 conversion for photo-reconnaissance.

 * TBM-3Q
 * TBM-3 conversion for electronic countermeasures, retained gun turret.

 * TBM-3R
 * TBM-3 conversions as seven-passenger, Carrier onboard delivery transport.

 * TBM-3S
 * TBM-3 conversion as an anti-submarine strike version.

 * TBM-3U
 * TBM-3 conversion as a general utility and target version.

 * TBM-3W
 * TBM-3 conversion as the first ship based airborne early warning control and relay platform with AN/APS-20 radar in ventral radome.

 * XTBM-4
 * Prototypes based on TBM-3E with modified wing incorporating a reinforced center section and a different folding mechanism. (3 built)

 * TBM-4
 * Production version of XTBM-4, 2,141 on order were cancelled.

Royal Navy Avenger

 * Tarpon GR.I
 * RN designation of the TBF-1, 400 delivered.

 * Avenger Mk.II
 * RN designation of the TBM-1/TBM-1C, 334 delivered.

 * Avenger Mk.III
 * RN designation of the TBM-3, 222 delivered

 * Avenger Mk.IV
 * RN designation of the TBM-3S, 70 cancelled

 * Avenger AS4
 * RN designation of the TBM-3E, delivered postwar with minimum modifications

 * Avenger AS5
 * RN designation of the TBM-3S, delivered postwar & fitted with British equipment

 * Avenger AS6
 * RN designation of the TBM-3S, fitted with British equipment including a centerline radome. A total of one hundred TBM-3E & TBM-3S were delivered to the Royal Navy in 1953.

Royal Canadian Navy Avengers

 * Avenger AS3
 * Modified by RCN for anti-submarine duty, dorsal gun turret removed, 98 built

 * Avenger AS3M
 * AS3 with magnetic anomaly detector boom added to rear fuselage

 * Avenger Mk.3W2
 * Similar to TBM-3W, with large ventral radome. 8 operated.

Operators

 * Brazilian Navy operated three Avengers in the 1950s for deck crew training aboard the carrier Minas Gerais (A-11).
 * 🇨🇦 Canada
 * Royal Canadian Navy operated Avengers until replaced by the CS2F Tracker in 1960.
 * Cuban Navy received 7 TBM-3S2 in 1956; however, they were out of service by 1960.
 * Aéronavale operated Avengers in the 1950s.
 * Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force operated Hunter-Killer Avengers groups in the 1950s and 1960s.
 * Royal Netherlands Navy – the Dutch Naval Aviation Service operated Avengers during the 1950s.
 * Royal New Zealand Air Force
 * No. 30 Squadron RNZAF
 * No. 31 Squadron RNZAF
 * No. 41 Squadron RNZAF
 * No. 42 Squadron RNZAF
 * Central Fighter Establishment
 * Nicaraguan Air Force
 * Royal Navy – Fleet Air Arm
 * 700 Naval Air Squadron
 * 703 Naval Air Squadron
 * 706 Naval Air Squadron
 * 711 Naval Air Squadron
 * 733 Naval Air Squadron
 * 736 Naval Air Squadron
 * 738 Naval Air Squadron
 * 744 Naval Air Squadron
 * 751 Naval Air Squadron
 * 756 Naval Air Squadron
 * 763 Naval Air Squadron
 * 764 Naval Air Squadron
 * 768 Naval Air Squadron
 * 774 Naval Air Squadron
 * 778 Naval Air Squadron
 * 782 Naval Air Squadron
 * 783 Naval Air Squadron
 * 785 Naval Air Squadron
 * 787 Naval Air Squadron
 * 797 Naval Air Squadron
 * 798 Naval Air Squadron
 * 820 Naval Air Squadron
 * 828 Naval Air Squadron
 * 832 Naval Air Squadron
 * 845 Naval Air Squadron
 * 846 Naval Air Squadron
 * 848 Naval Air Squadron
 * 849 Naval Air Squadron
 * 850 Naval Air Squadron
 * 851 Naval Air Squadron
 * 852 Naval Air Squadron
 * 853 Naval Air Squadron
 * 854 Naval Air Squadron
 * 855 Naval Air Squadron
 * 856 Naval Air Squadron
 * 857 Naval Air Squadron
 * United States Navy
 * United States Marine Corps
 * Uruguayan Navy operated 16 TBF Avengers in the 1949 to 1963.
 * 853 Naval Air Squadron
 * 854 Naval Air Squadron
 * 855 Naval Air Squadron
 * 856 Naval Air Squadron
 * 857 Naval Air Squadron
 * United States Navy
 * United States Marine Corps
 * Uruguayan Navy operated 16 TBF Avengers in the 1949 to 1963.
 * Uruguayan Navy operated 16 TBF Avengers in the 1949 to 1963.
 * Uruguayan Navy operated 16 TBF Avengers in the 1949 to 1963.

Notable incidents

 * A famous incident involving the TBM / TBF Avenger aircraft was the disappearance of Flight 19, a training flight of five Avengers that originated from Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale and was lost in December 1945 over the Bermuda Triangle.
 * During an airshow on 17 April 2021, TBM #91188 made a successful forced-landing south of Cocoa Beach, Florida near Patrick Space Force Base, in shallow surf. Valiant Air Command, the group that owns the plane, recovered the TBM for transport to Titusville, Florida, for extensive repairs.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Grumman TBF Avenger


text:
John Ellis

John Ellis may refer to:

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Business

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Politics

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title: John Ellis