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I have two sentences:
A) I love this chair, which my father bought last year
B) My city has a lot of beautiful places, which makes it a popular travel destination

Here are some questions. Can anyone answer?

  1. Are the clauses starting with "which" in the two sentences above, relative clauses?
  2. In sentence A, is it okay if I change, "which" to "that"? Because as I understand, sentence A uses nonrestrictive relative clause. If I use "that" instead of, "which", it will be a restrictive clause, so it sounds odd to me because "this" seems kinda "restrictive" already?
  3. In sentence B, if I change "which makes" to "making", is the clause "making it a ....." still a relative clause? Also, is the comma setting off the nonrestrictive clause a part of it with the only purpose of separating the clauses?
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  1. Yes, those clauses are relative clauses, without doubt.

  2. No, it is not possible to change "which" to "that", the reason being that this relative clause being a non-defining relative clause it can't retain its non-defining property if "that" is used. Let's recall that the comma is the mark of a non-defining clause, otherwise called a non-determining clause or non-restrictive clause. https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/grammar/clauses

  3. No, the clause in which "which makes" is replaced by "making" is not a relative clause. It is a nonfinite clause without subject. However, the nonfinite verb form ("making") is a formal indicator of subordination, just as the relative pronoun (in this case, "which") is such a formal indicator. The comma is not a part of the clause: it is a sentence element with the purpose of articulating the sentence. It can be considered as a marker of syntax, this being so because the syntax is different when it is absent.

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  • Sorry for question 2, I wrote the question wrong. The question should be if I change ", which" to "that" for sentence A, is it still correct? Also, for question 3, is the nonfinite clause (if "which makes" is changed to "making") a reduced relative clause? Thank you
    – Quốc Anh Phạm
    Commented Dec 11 at 14:36
  • @QuốcAnhPhạm Part 2 of my answer does concern only your second question, whichever way you phrase it. // A reduced relative is merely a relative in which the relative pronoun has been omitted, so this concept has nothing to do with nonfinite clauses '(which is what "making…" is). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduced_relative_clause // Perhaps the typing '", which"' in your comment is not a mere typing error and you think that the esentially American practice of including punctuation marks on the right of a quote within that quote has its counterpart on the left; this is never the case.
    – LPH
    Commented Dec 15 at 10:51

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