Difference Between That and Who

That vs Who

A sentence is a group of words that convey meaning. It is composed of clauses with a subject and a predicate. The subject can either be a noun or a pronoun. A pronoun is a word or group of words that are used instead of a noun. There are many types of pronouns, namely:

Personal pronouns which are used as a substitute for the names of persons or things. They can be subjective, objective, prepositional, disjunctive, dummy, or weak.
Possessive pronouns which are used to specify ownership or possession and can also act as nouns, possessive adjectives, or determiners.
Demonstrative pronouns which indicate the person or thing that is referred to.
Indefinite pronouns which refer to a general type of persons or things and which can be distributive or negative.
Interrogative pronouns which asks what is referred to.
Relative pronouns which refer to persons or things that have already been mentioned. A relative pronoun links two clauses in a sentence and relates the relative clause to the noun or pronoun that it modified. Examples of relative pronouns are: which, whose, whom, who, and that.

For example: “This is my pet. I love my pet so much. This is my pet that I love so much.” In this example, the first and second sentences are made into one with two clauses. “This is my pet” (main clause) and “that I love so much” (relative clause).
Another example: “This is John. He is Jane’s brother. This is John who is Jane’s brother”. “This is John” is the main clause and “who is Jane’s brother” is the relative clause.
The word “that” is a relative pronoun which is used when referring to a thing or a place, but it can also be used to refer to people while the relative pronoun “who” is used to refer only to people. The word “that” is also used to present a restrictive relative clause in a sentence or as a demonstrative pronoun or adjective, as a subordinating conjunction, or as an adverb.
The word “who,” on the other hand, is used depending upon the grammar of the clause including one which uses it as an implied antecedent. It is also used as a subject for a verb and may be used interchangeably with the word “that.” It is usually used after a comma to suggest further remarks about a person.

Summary:

1.“That” is a relative pronoun that is used when referring to either a person or a thing while “who” is a relative pronoun that is used when referring to a person.
2.The word “that” is also used as a demonstrative pronoun, adjective, conjunction, or an adverb while the word “who” is also used as a subject or object of a verb and is usually used after a comma.
3.The words “that” and “who” can be used in place of each other, but “who” is used if the antecedent is a person while “that” is used if the antecedent is either a thing or a person.

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