Let’s talk about relative determiners!
There is only one relative determiner – cujo (and its variants). This is a relatively recent change to the terminology, so you may find a lot of articles that list cujo as either a relative pronoun or a quantifier, but this is incorrect.
Relative determiners always agree in number and gender with the noun that follows (instead of with the subject of the main clause). This should sound familiar because it’s the same way that possessive determiners like meu, tua, nossas, etc. work!
Examples
For example, you’ll see here that cujo agrees with irmão rather than menina:
A menina cujo irmão teve um acidente mora nesta casa grandeThe girl whose brother had an accident lives in this big house
Here, cuja agrees with janela:
O camião, cuja janela está partida, é da minha mãeThe truck, whose window is broken, is my mother’s
Here is a plural form example in which cujos agrees with pais:
Este é o meu amigo, cujos pais são doutoresThis is my friend whose parents are doctors
To better understand how this determiner works, let’s split that last sentence to show how cujo connects the 2 clauses:
Este é o meu amigoThis is my friend + Os pais do meu amigo são doutoresMy friend's parents are doctors = Este é o meu amigo, cujos pais são doutoresThis is my friend whose parents are doctors
Hi,
How should we add a comma or “,” with “cujo”?
From my view of the two sentences “[a] menina cujo irmão teve um acidente, mora nesta casa grande” and “[o] camião, cuja janela está partida, é da minha mãe”, they have the same structures. However, we add a comma before “cujo” on the second one, but the first. Why is that?
Olá! Good question 🙂 This is highly dependent on context.
In the first example, we have no comma because the word “cujo” is used to narrow down our subject, i.e. to indicate that we are talking specifically about this girl whose brother had an accident (not any other girl). Presumably, the exact meaning of “a menina” was not defined before this sentence, so “cujo” is an essential element which can’t be separated with commas.
On the other hand, the second example has commas isolating a phrase so as to mark it as complementary, but non-essential information. We can assume that the subject “o camião” was already previously well defined and the extra bit of info about the window is not helping us any further in identifying the truck we’re talking about. In this case and any other similar cases, we should use commas to separate that tangential information.
It’s clear that comma usage is different in Portuguese compared to English, specifically when to use them. How about the “pause” component though? In English, commas introduce a pause in the expression. Is this true for Portuguese as well?
I think that’s a common statement stated both in Portuguese and in English (commas = pauses), but not always true for either language in practice. When speaking, we might pause in places where commas are not acceptable. In writing, we might have to insert commas in places where we don’t really need to pause in speech. I suppose the real answer to your question is “It’s true sometimes” 🙂
Instead of saying the truck whose window was broken, couldn’t you just say the truck with a broken window?
Yes you could say it that way. We’re just using this wording to help demonstrate how cujo/cuja/cujos/cujas work.
I have to give you a standing ovation for the Stephen King reference in the picture here!
Things like this are one of the many reasons that this site is the best.
Parabéns!!!
Concordo!!!
In English we can use “whose” as a demonstrative/interrogative pronoun: “Whose are these?” or “I don’t know whose these are.” (The subject is in some sense already known.)
How would you express this in Portuguese? Can cujo/a/os/as be used as a noun or must it always have a stated reference? What would be the normal way of expressing this in conversation?
Obrigado!
For the sentence “Whose are these?” the Portuguese translation would be “De quem é isto?” (“isto” does not have plural. It can refer to one or more elements) or “De quem são estes/estas?”.
Cujo/a/os/as cannot be used as a noun. It’s always a relative determiner!
Examples: Whose brother is this? = De quem é este irmão?
Sandra, whose brother is my friend, had a baby. = A Sandra, cujo irmão é meu amigo, teve um bebé.
Muito obrigado!
Não sei de quem são estas calças. Vou ficar com elas, rsrs.
O homem cujo cão me mordeu ontem me visitou no hospital esta manhã. Ele me pediu dinheiro para consertar os dentes dele.
Let me just say that the most correct way of phrasing this would be:
O homem cujo cão me mordeu ontem visitou-me no hospital esta manhã. Ele pediu-me dinheiro para consertar/arranjar os dentes dele.
The forms “me visitou” and “me pediu” are technically correct, but are mostly used in Brazilian Portuguese!
Check this Learning Note for more details:
https://www.practiceportuguese.com/learning-notes/introduction-to-clitic-object-pronouns/
Obrigado, Relógio. Muito útil!
In the exercise, there is a sentence “Ela parou para ajudar a mulher cujas malas se tinham partido –
She stopped to help the woman
whose bags had broken”
Doesn’t it make more sense to use “partidas” (malas) instead of “partido”, since not the gender or quantity of the bags matches to use “partido”?
Olá. In this case, you’re looking at a past participle (partido) which is part of a compound tense conjugation (tinham partido). All compound tenses are formed by the auxiliary verb “ter” (or “haver”) + past participle of the main verb, so you’ll get used to recognizing them. As verb forms, they are invariable, regardless of the nouns before or after them.
On the other hand, whenever you see a past participle with an auxiliary verb other than “ter” or “haver”, that’s not a compound tense and the past participle actually works like an adjective, becoming variable. For example:
– As malas estão partidas (“partidas” agrees with “malas”)
– Eles ficaram chateados (“chateados” agrees with “eles”)
– A festa foi cancelada (“cancelada” agrees with “festa”)
So, in short, whenever you spot a past participle, look at the auxiliary verb behind it to see whether it’s forming a compound tense (invariable) or not (variable).
We have two units dedicated to compound tenses with more information on them: Compound Tenses 1 & Compound Tenses 2