The phrase "a relative clause" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to refer to a specific type of dependent clause that modifies a noun and usually begins with a relative pronoun like "who," "which," or "that."
Example: "The book that I borrowed from the library is fascinating."
Alternatives: "an adjectival clause" or "a defining clause".
If you are diagramming at home, here's the explanation: "… that irk me" is a relative clause.
A relative clause is like a sentence: it has a subject, and may also have an object.
Use "who" for the subject in a relative clause, "whom" for a direct object or object of a preposition.
But when it becomes a relative clause in a longer sentence, the word order moves around to who some contend was autisticIt is a kind of recursive structure.
Writers should avoid it.What Johnson likes about this case is that it really requires an understanding of some syntax: what a relative clause is (eg, "whom some consider autistic"), the cases and their roles (I, he and who versus me, him and whom), and verbs that take a direct object (consider) versus those that take a clause (contend).
Verbs that take direct objects are called transitive, and consider is transitive: Some[subject] consider him[object] autisticWhen this goes into a relative clause, the him keeps its case, becoming whom: Newton, whom[object] some[subject] consider autisticBut examples 2-4 have a twisty syntax.
The real decision is not whether to use "that" or "which" but whether to use a restrictive or a nonrestrictive relative clause.
Verbal passives occurred in two very different syntactic structures as main-clause verbs, e.g. This protection was associated with decreased formation of the toxic metabolite).,nd as the matrix verb of a post-nominal relative (typically a reduced relative) clause, e.g. mortality associated with the development of opportunistic infections).
Experiment 3 compared materials in which a quantifier was rotated through subject positions of a nested relative clause structure.
In (46a), the linker 'i' H heads a pseudo-cleft clause, in which the ku'-marked clause is a headless relative clause (Tsai 2003 18.
A restrictive relative clause is essential to the meaning of the sentence, often because it pinpoints the referent of the noun from among a set of alternatives.
