Why can't I grammatically repeat the object with the pronoun "it"?

Question

Someone told me that this sentence is wrong grammatically:

Where is the calculator that I lent it to you yesterday?

I've read the feedbacks from many people that I shouldn't include "it", one person said it is because there's already "that" so that it would be redundant if I add "it".

Apart from all that, could you tell me in detail what is wrong with my sentence, what shouldn't I add and what should I add? If my guess is correct, are these sentences correct? Thanks in advance!

1. Where is the calculator that I lent to you yesterday?
2. Where is the calculator I lent it to you yesterday?

Answer 1

What you've heard is correct: "it" is a repeat of "that", and therefore ungrammatical. Here's why.

Your sentence has two clauses, and they have a noun in common, "the calculator" and "it". The "deep" forms of those two clauses is something like:

Where is [the calculator]?
I lent [it] to you yesterday

The parts in [brackets] represent that "the calculator" and "it" are the same thing.

To combine the two sentences together, we choose one clause as the main clause ("Where is the calculator?"), and we subordinate the other one ("I lent it to you yesterday"). In this case, we change this clause into a relative clause.

To form a relative clause, the first step is to replace the noun in common with a relative pronoun, in this case, "that":

I lent that to you yesterday

Next step is to front the relative pronoun, which means moving it to the front of the clause, leaving an unpronounced gap behind:

that I lent ______ to you yesterday

The final step is to insert this relative clause into the main clause so that the relative pronoun comes right after the noun in common in the main clause:

Where is the calculator that I lent _______ to you yesterday?

And we're done. Hopefully you can see that the word "that" actually is "it", the calculator, so repeating it would be a mistake.

In your sentence 2, the word "that" is gone. This is because it is optional. Omitting it does not make it OK to bring "it" back. The gap is still there, so sentence 2 is incorrect. It should be:

2. Where is the calculator _______ I lent ______ to you yesterday?

Answer 2

"That I lent to you" is a relative clause that functions adjectivally in relation to the preceding noun "calculator". It does this by telling the listener or reader which calculator you are referring to. If there were a single-word adjective that could carry the same meaning, let's say "lent-by-me-to-you-yesterday", you could put it before the noun to get the sentence "Where is the lent-by-me-to-you-yesterday calculator?" Compare "Where is the hot calculator?" or "Where is the beautiful calculator?"

The structure of the sentence, and in particular your use of the word "that", signals that a dependent clause is coming. It also makes it clear what specific noun the dependent clause - which here is an adjectival relative clause - will refer to.

"I lent it to you" is a main clause, not a dependent one. It works when the "it" refers back to a noun in an earlier clause - not adjectivally (to give you new information) but as a stand-in for that noun.

You're confusing a dependent clause with a main one.

Answer 3

^{[I'm compelled to write an answer here because the accepted one sounds good and is highly voted but is wrong.]}

Preliminaries

The word that is not a pronoun and doesn't stand in for a noun phrase. It is the same that which we find in sentences like:

1. I think that he hit him.

The idea that we can transform sentences by replacing an it or other pronoun in the subordinate clause with a that will not go through. Consider this proposal from the other end:

2. It is not to [you] that I spoke.

This does not decompose into:

• It is not to [you]. I spoke [you]. ^{(the last sentence is ungrammatical)}

Similarly, consider:

3. This is not [the place] that we met.

This does not decompose into:

• This is not [the place]. We met [ it ]. ^{(the last sentence means something different!)}

How that relative clauses work.

Relative clauses with that, and those relative clauses that can occur without any relative word both work in the same way. The relative clause has an antecedent, which is often a noun phrase, but may be a different type of phrase, for example a preposition phrase as in (2). That example would be best represented like this if recast as two sentences:

• It wasn't [to you]. I spoke [to you].

Notice that to you is a preposition phrase, not a pronoun or noun phrase!

The important point about a relative clause with that is that is has a gap in it, and it is this gap that is co-indexed with the antecedent. In other words, the gap tells us where to mentally reinsert the antecedent into the subordinate relative clause. Consider:

4. This is the man that [he hit]

The verb hit normally takes an object. The object is missing from the subordinate clause in (4). We interpret the sentence like this:

5. This is the man_i that [he hit ____i]

The little < i > there shows that the man and the gap in the relative clause refer to the same thing. So we understand from the gap in the subordinate clause in brackets that the man was hit. We could also represent the sentence like this:

6. This is the man that [he hit the man.

Compare (4) with (7) below:

7. This is the man that [hit him].

Here the gap in the relative clause is in subject position. This sentence means:

8. This is the man_i that [____i hit him]

or

9. This is the man that [the man hit him]

We can also represent It wasn't to you that I spoke in a similar way, as long as we don't pretend that that is a pronoun:

10. It wasn't to you that [I spoke].
11. It wasn't to you_i that [I spoke ____i
12. It was to you that [I spoke to you].

The reason that we cannot fill the gap in with words is that the gap actually tells us what role the antecedent plays within the relative clause. Consider examples (4) and (7) and then consider the ungrammatical example (13) below:

13. This is the man that [he hit him].

We cannot understand from (13) whether the man referred to was hit or did the hitting because there is no gap in the relative clause to tell us where the man fits in.

The Original Poster's question

You cannot fill in the gap in a relative clause with a pronoun. It's ungrammatical to do so. The reason is that the gap is an important part of the relative clause. It tells us what the antecedent refers to.

The word that is not a pronoun, although traditional grammars used to think it was. All the evidence shows us that it isn't. A good way to see this is that even in relative clauses where we don't need to use the word that, we still cannot fill in the gap with a pronoun:

14. This is the man we spoke to.
15. *This is the man we spoke to him. (ungrammatical)

Here we clearly see that (15) is ungrammatical even though there is no word that. It is completely irrelevant whether the word that is present or absent, you cannot fill in the gap in a relative clause, with a pronoun or with any other phrase.

Answer 4

I am not sure that I can give a convincing answer here, but the phrase “that I lent you yesterday” is effectively an adjective describing the calculator. To recursively refer to the thing being described inside an adjectival phrase just isn’t done.

Answer 5

Very simply, the sentence already has an object, "the calculator." "It" is essentially a repetition of the object of the sentence, and unnecessary. If you end the interrogative, and start another sentence, "it" functions as a perfectly good stand-in for "the calculator."

Answer 6

The entire phrase, "the calculator that I lent to you yesterday" is the object.

You can replace this with the pronoun "it".

Where is (the calculator that I lent to you yesterday)?

Where is it?

You need to use either the fully described object, i.e. "the calculator that I lent to you yesterday", or its replacement, "it", not both.