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The University of St Andrews ______ is the oldest university in Scotland.

A. which was founded in 1413

B. , which was founded in 1413,

C. , that was founded in 1413,

The answer is 'B'.

I wonder why 'A' is wrong?

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Dasik
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    Punctuation conventions. Nothing to do with the language per se. – TimR Oct 16 '14 at 17:38
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    If you choose A, the clause will become a restrictive relative clause, and your sentence seems to sound better with a non-restrictive one. – Damkerng T. Oct 16 '14 at 17:54
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    A implies that there are multiple Universities of St. Andrews, and you are specifying which one (the one which was founded in 1413, as opposed to some other one). Since there is presumably only the one University, the non-restrictive B is more correct. – Roger Oct 16 '14 at 18:37
  • See http://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/1243/the-department-shredded-all-the-files-from-the-inquiry-which-that-contain?rq=1 for a good explanation of restrictive/non-restrictive clauses. – Martha Oct 16 '14 at 20:36
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    @TRomano: um, including or omitting the comma totally changes the meaning of the sentence. How is that "nothing to do with the language"? – Martha Oct 16 '14 at 20:40
  • um, yourself. See my comment below. – TimR Oct 16 '14 at 21:05
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    While not necessarily an answer to the grammatical problem at hand, in common usage I would just use "The University of St. Andrews, founded in 1413, is the oldest university in Scotland." – corsiKa Oct 16 '14 at 22:32
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    In today's standard English, both #A and #B would be acceptable. BUT, if you are a student or an employee, then you'll have to give the teacher the answer they want or your employer what they want. The choice of using a pair of commas or not, that usually depends on the writer and what they want to convey: if the writer wants that info (the relative clause) to be integrated into the main clause, then no commas; else if the writer wants that info to be considered to be supplementary, then the pair of commas. – F.E. Oct 18 '14 at 02:50
  • Aside: Your #3 is supposedly no longer acceptable nowadays, though it was basically okay until pedants and prescriptivists tried to stomp out its usage in the early half of the 20th century--and they have mostly succeeded. Nowadays, you'll rarely see it in edited prose. – F.E. Oct 18 '14 at 02:59

3 Answers3

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Without the commas, the "which" becomes a restrictive clause: it's there to tell you which University of St. Andrews the sentence is talking about, i.e. it's implying that there is more than one such university. Since that's presumably not true (there's only one University of St. Andrews), you have to put in the commas to make the "which" part into a simple non-restrictive subordinate clause, i.e. one that's giving information that is parenthetical to the main sentence - the sentence could exist perfectly happily without it.

('C' is incorrect because "that" doesn't like to be subordinate like that. You can sometimes get away with it in colloquial, informal speech, but most teachers would frown on it.)

Martha
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  • I have to disagree with Martha. The absence of commas do not turn the relative clause into a restrictive clause that distinguishes St Andrews from other schools of the same name. The clause is a simple subordinate clause with or without the commas. To make the clause a restrictive clause so as to distinguish one St Andrews from another St Andrews, one should say The University of St Andrews, the one that was founded in 1413, is the oldest .... – TimR Oct 16 '14 at 21:04
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    @Martha I think you are confusing "subordinate" with "non-restrictive"; both restrictive and non-restrictive relatives are subordinate. – StoneyB on hiatus Oct 16 '14 at 21:16
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    @TRomano I cannot agree. Although it is true that both sorts of relative clause are subordinate, the absence of commas does mark a relative clause as restrictive (as does the use of that), and the presence of comma-bracketing does mark the clause as non-restrictive. This is not merely a typographic convention: the commas reflect "comma intonation" in speech. – StoneyB on hiatus Oct 16 '14 at 21:19
  • The oldest university in Scotland is the University of St Andrews that was founded in 1413. There the clause is a restrictive clause, distinguishing the university from the other (hypothetical) one of the same name that was founded in 1414. – TimR Oct 16 '14 at 21:19
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    @TRomano Indeed; that is doubly marked as restrictive. The University of St. Andrews which was founded in 1413 is singly marked as restrictive. The University of St. Andrews, which was founded in 1413 is singly marked as non-restrictive. The University of St. Andrews, that was founded in 1413 is contradictorily marked as both restrictive (by that) and non-restrictive (by the comma). – StoneyB on hiatus Oct 16 '14 at 21:23
  • @StoneyB: how could someone listening to the sentence as it is spoken possibly know that the clause was restrictive? The listener would have no idea whether there were "commas" there or not. That is what I meant by its having nothing to do with the language per se. – TimR Oct 16 '14 at 21:24
  • I don't believe it is possible to give the parenthetic clause here, with or without commas, an intonation pattern that conveys the meaning "that St Andrews, not the other St Andrews". – TimR Oct 16 '14 at 21:27
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    @StoneyB: "simple subordinate clause" was my attempt to describe a subordinate clause that is not restrictive (as opposed to a subordinate clause that is restrictive), but I can see how it was, uh, less than clear. Edited. – Martha Oct 16 '14 at 21:31
  • @Martha: I understood your phrase "simple subordinate clause" in the way you intended it, as one that was not restrictive. – TimR Oct 16 '14 at 21:33
  • @TRomano: there are some things that are different between written vs. spoken language. Punctuation is one of them. That doesn't mean that punctuation can be dismissed as irrelevant. – Martha Oct 16 '14 at 21:34
  • @Martha: I do understand punctuation quite well. I do not dismiss it as "irrelevant"; I am saying that here it is not relevant to deciding whether the parenthetic clause is restrictive or non-restrictive. – TimR Oct 16 '14 at 21:37
  • One could come down hard on fourteen THIRTeen and convey the meaning that there is another St Andrews founded at a later date, e.g. 1419, but that is not an intonation pattern that defines the parenthetic clause. And the other school would have to have been founded in the 15th century for that intonation to make any sense. If it were founded in the 17th c. the emphasis on 13 would have no importance. Same diff if one said FOURteen thirteen. – TimR Oct 16 '14 at 21:43
  • @TRomano: in spoken language, if intonation can't get across your point, you rephrase. This in no way affects the fact that in written language, commas can completely change the meaning of a sentence. – Martha Oct 16 '14 at 23:25
  • @TRomano CGEL (whose authors prefer 'integrated' to 'restrictive'): "A supplementary relative is characteristically preceded and (if non-final) followed by a comma, or, less often, by a dash, or the clause may be enclosed within parentheses. Conversely, an integrated relative is not separated from ts antecedent by a comma or other punctuation mark. (1058)" – StoneyB on hiatus Oct 17 '14 at 01:07
  • But that does not mean that removing the commas turns a non-restrictive clause into a restrictive|integrated clause. Punctuation reflects grammar; it does not create it. – TimR Oct 17 '14 at 12:15
  • @TRomano Although there are occasional exceptions, it's generally accepted that commas distinguish the two types of relatives in the same way intonation does. From A Student's Introduction to English Grammar, p.187 (the same authors as CGEL, cited above): "Integrated relatives are integrated intonationally into the larger construction. Supplementary ones are set apart, spoken as a separate intonation unit. In writing, this difference is reflected in the punctuation, with supplementary relatives generally marked off by commas (or stronger punctuation, such as dashes or parentheses) [...]." –  Oct 17 '14 at 21:12
  • @Snailboat: as I said in my penultimate remark, punctuation reflects grammar, it does not create it. A clause is a linguistic construction, not a typographic one. There is no intonation pattern that can distinguish a restrictive parenthetic which-clause from a non-restrictive parenthetic which-clause. Or if there is, I'd like to have it described to me. – TimR Oct 17 '14 at 22:11
  • I'm advancing a descriptivist argument (as distinct from a prescriptivist one) against the use of which to introduce restrictive clauses. – TimR Oct 18 '14 at 10:44
  • Nunberg and I fundamentally disagree. – TimR Oct 18 '14 at 10:46
  • @Snailboat: care to enlighten me on my putative "misconception about intonation"? – TimR Oct 18 '14 at 10:53
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    @TRomano Please feel free to ask a separate question about intonation if the quote from ASItEG was not enough to make it clear (which is surprising, since I assumed you were a native speaker―this is rather basic and uncontroversial stuff). We should try to avoid extended discussion on Martha's answer here. By the way, none of this has anything to do with prescriptivism. –  Oct 18 '14 at 14:50
  • @Snailboat: I said that I'd like to hear a restrictive clause starting with which that is intoned differently than a non-restrictive one. You mentioned Nunberg. I'm a native speaker & studied philology (OE, ME, ModE, etc) for five years in grad school, and happen to disagree with his view that "writing is language". IMO writing is a system of communication whose success depends on its ability to encode many of the features of natural language and its ability to augment it with new capabilities: e.g. we can hear a statement (unrecorded) only once but read its written version many times. – TimR Oct 18 '14 at 19:43
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To make clear that the university was founded in 1413, you can move the clause to the front of the sentence.

It probably should be:

Founded in 1413, The University of St Andrews is the oldest university in Scotland.

Daniel P
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I think many non-native speakers don't know the definition of the relative defining and non-defining clauses. So I have tried to explain these clauses in simple words along with my reply although a satisfactory answer has already been given by Martha.

The university of St Andrew is the oldest university in Scotland.

This sentence is a complete sentence on its own. Anybody can understand its full sense; we don't need any information essential to know which university is being talked about. It's already mentioned in this sentence. If any information is given after the name of the university St Andrew, it'll be an additional information. For this additional information consisting of which + a verb we need to put a comma before and after this information. This clause giving the additional information is called the non-defining relative clause.

In light of this explanation, the first option is wrong as there are no commas before and after the additional information "which was founded in 1413".

As for the second option ", which was founded in 1413, "is correct because it fits in the explanation given in the first paragraph. It has all the characteristics of the non-defining relative clause i.e. additional information, along with use of "which" at the beginning of this clause and commas before and after this clause.

Regarding the third option, it's also wrong. Two commas are there but "that" has been used instead of "which" used in the non-defining relative clause.

Now look at the following sentence:

The university is the oldest university in Scotland.

This sentence is also complete but if the listener/reader doesn't know which university is being talked about, this sentence does not give the full sense required unless some information essential to understand the full sense of the sentence is provided. The defining relative clause contains this essential information for which we don't use commas before and after it and we use "that" at the beginning of it for things and persons. We can also use "who" for persons and "which" for things. This clause giving essential information is called the defining relative clause. We can put the above sentence with the relative defining clause as follows:

The university that/which is called the university of St Andrew is the oldest university in Scotland. "That is called the university of St Andrew" is the defining relative clause".

Khan
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