WHREL_OBJ WH relative clauses (object position)

Biber H32

Definition

Relative clauses introduced by WH-words where the relative pronoun serves as object.

Detection Rules

WH relative pronoun as object of verb in relative clause.

semgrex{pos:/WDT|WP/}=wh <dobj {pos:/VB.*/}=verb

Requires: pos, dep

pybiber

WH relative (object): WH-word with obj dep, preceded by N/CD/DT, with 2-back token not ask/tell. Second pattern handles intervening punctuation (“the man, who...”).

p1 
cql[lemma!="ask|tell"] [pos="NN.*|CD|DT"] [pos="W.*" & word!="that" & dep=".*obj.*"]
p2 
cql[lemma!="ask|tell" & pos="NN.*|CD|DT"] [pos="\\.|,|:|;|-LRB-|-RRB-"] [word="who" & dep=".*obj.*"]
combine: p1 | p2

Requires: word, lemma, pos, dep

Normalization

Per finite_verbs

Examples

the ring which Bilbo found

Sources

  • biber_1988 — Biber, Douglas (1988) : Variation across Speech and Writing
  • pybiber — Brown, David West & Reinhart, Alex (2026) : pybiber — Python package for linguistic feature extraction and Multi-Dimensional Analysis

Notes

Not separately in MFTE (WHSC covers WH subordinate clauses generally). Highest loading on D3. Needs dependency parsing.

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