5.08 Sentence relative clauses

Rule: Sentence relative clauses are introduced by which.

Examples of errors:

1. They have to live in peace, what means they have to compromise.
2. People should maintain their ideal weight, that means 10% less than the standard weight.
3. The child loses the sounds it doesn't need, that means it concentrates on the sounds needed for speech.
4. They cannot communicate, what makes it even more painful.
5. It doesn't consist of living material, that means, has no sells.
6. This is a kind of American ideology, what means that everybody can reach the top, no matter from where he comes.
7. So they are forced to deny a part of themselves what results in the splitting of their personality.
8. These people try to be liberal what means to them accepting everything without question.
9. This is done for the sake of security, that means, Germany should be prepared for possible attack.
10. I have phonetic difficulties, but only in the beginning, that means when I start a conversation with someone.

Sentence relative clauses are relative clauses whose antecedent is not a noun phrase but a clause, sentence, or series of sentences. In (1). for example, the relative pronoun does not substitute for or represent the noun peace, but the whole preceding clause. Sentence relatives are always non-restrictive, that is, separated from the main clause by pauses and commas or hyphens, and the relative pronoun is always which. That means, of course, is a translation of daß heißt, which in German can introduce a coordinate clause separated from the preceding one only by a comma :

Sie müssen in Frieden leben, daß heißt, sie müssen sich vergleichen.

There are several possible translations of such a sentence, e.g.:

...peace, that is (to say), they have to compromise

...peace, which is to say, they have to compromise

...peace, which means they have to compromise

...peace. This/That means they have to compromise

...peace, and this/that means they have to compromise

...peace. In other words, they have to compromise

In other words and that is (to say) are often abbreviated as i.e. If we consider that means... in (2), (3),(5),(9), and (10) as a coordinate or independent rather than a sentential relative clause, then, the error can be considered one of punctuation. The pertinent rule in this case would be that independent clauses cannot be joined simply by a comma (this error is often referred to as "comma splicing") as in German, but require either a comma and a conjunction (e.g. and) or a full stop (period, semi-colon or hyphen).