it, or I'll do it however you do it. Additionally, in a structure more related to the normal free relative clause, examples such as I see how you do it. Or: I saw where he went. Gapless relative clauses Relative clauses in English usually have gapping. For example, in the sentence "This is the man that I saw", there is a gap after the word saw. The shared noun phrase the man is understood to fill that gap ("I saw [the man]"). However, gapless relative clauses occur in non-standard English. One form of gapless relatives uses a resumptive pronoun. In a 1990 article, Ellen Prince observed that such constructions were common in spoken English but are officially ungrammatical. For example: They were just towed across the Midway onto the bridle path, where they were just sitting there peacefully In this case, removing the underlined resumptive pronoun results in an acceptable gapped relative clause: They were just towed across the Midway onto the bridle path, where they were just sitting ___ peacefully In other cases, the resumptive pronoun is used to work around a syntactic constraint: They have a billion dollars of inventory that they don't know where it is. In this example, the word it occurs as part of a wh-island. Attempting to extract it gives an unacceptable result: *They have a billion dollars of inventory that they don't know where ___ is. Gapless relative clauses may also occur without a resumptive pronoun: a book that you wish the author was a terrific friend of yours See also English grammar References Relative English usage controversies