The boy pushed his brother who was wearing a white short.
"who" refers to what in the sentence above?
If "his brother" was followed by a comma, would the refrence of "who" changes?
Thank you
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Sign up to join this communityThe boy pushed his brother who was wearing a white short.
"who" refers to what in the sentence above?
If "his brother" was followed by a comma, would the refrence of "who" changes?
Thank you
"Who was wearing a white short" is a relative clause of "his brother." (similar to an adjective but afterwards and it looks like a sentence) In English, relative clauses, (which start with who, whom, which, that and any relative pronoun I might have missed,) normally come immediately after the noun they modify. The starting pronoun (if considered a pronoun) always refers to the immediately preceding noun and it is the subject of the relative clause.
http://glossary.sil.org/term/relative-clause seems to think that "The plumber arrived who we had called earlier." (where who=the plumber) is a good sentence. In this case, notice how, even though relative clause is not immediately after the noun it modifies, there is no other noun between them.
It is also possible to add another noun after the first word of a relative clause. That new word will the become the subject of the clause, and the initial pronoun will become the object. Thus, in: The boy pushed his brother who I hate. Contains the relative clause "who I hate", where I is the subject of the the relative clause, and who (referring to the brother) is the object. Strangely, this type of clause always has OSV (object subject verb) word order.
(Also, I think you meant shirt not short)
In this context, "who" refers to the brother.
If there was an intention to refer to "the boy", the sentence could have been formulated:
The boy who was wearing a white short pushed his brother.