(1) The woman who I saw was Alice. (2) The woman that I saw was Alice.
In some cases, it's also possible to use an unmarked relative clause—i.e.. a relative clause that doesn't use either a wh-pronoun or that. as in (3):
(3) The woman I saw was Alice.
Note that (1), (2), and (3) have the exact same meaning: the speaker is free to choose between the wh-pronoun as in (1), that as in (2), and "zero" as in (3). However, the zero option isn't always available. In (4-6), the wh-pronoun and that are both grammatical, but the zero option isn't grammatical:
(4) The topic which interested me was linguistics. (5) The topic that interested me was linguistics. (6) *The topic interested me was linguistics.
Write a short essay (max 2 pages, about 600 words) answering this question: What kinds of relative clauses allow the zero option. and what ones don't?
Sample Solution