• The girl who tells the story is my cousin.

• The woman whose wallet was stolen went to the police station.

• The book which I bought yesterday got lost.

In the above sentences, who, whose, and which are pronouns which refer to girl, woman, and book, respectively.

These are called relative pronouns and the nouns they refer to are called antecedents.

The underlined group of words in the above sentences are clauses (a group of words that has a subject and a predicate). The words in blue - who, whose, which, and that - are the relative pronouns.

A relative pronoun replaces a noun and shows the relation or connection between the clause and the noun or antecedent in a sentence.

There are five relative pronouns:

• who, whom, whose - refer to people

• which - refers to things or animals

• that - refers to things, animals, or people

Who is used as the subject of a sentence.

Whom is used as the object of a sentence.

Whose shows possession.