Is this ‘which’ dead?

ptidhomme

In french these 2 usages are distinguished through "que/qui/quel" vs. "lequel". This phrasing is often seen in legal texts.

You'd translate "The appellant made a motion which is now granted" with "Le requérant a déposé une requête qui est maintenant acceptée".

vs.

"The appellant made a motion, which motion is now granted" with "Le requérant a déposé une requête, laquelle motion est maintenant acceptée".

("granted" might be translated differently than "acceptée" but you get the point).

canjobear

If you’re interested in hard-to-parse English relative clauses, check out the first sentence of George Washington’s first inaugural address:

“Among the vicissitudes incident to life no event could have filled me with greater anxieties than that of which the notification was transmitted by your order, and received on the 14th day of the present month.”

playingalong

I fail to understand how is that different than let say...

"I read an article which I didn't understand".

Is it really that different than:

"I read an article about English grammar, which article I didn't understand" ?

defen

There’s a character in the Aubrey-Maturin series who uses this construction often. I always wondered if it was an idiosyncrasy, a regionalism, or an archaic usage. Guess this answers it!

EdSchouten

This construct is still used a lot in Dutch (‘which’ -> ‘welke’).

leereeves

I think it's been replaced by "that", as in:

"Upon the submission of the cause the appellant made a motion to amend its assignments of error. That motion is now granted."

petercooper

I've seen the word "said" used for the same job, at least in British English.

emodendroket

It sounds about right that the example they came up with was from a legal context because that's easily the most likely place I'd expect to hear this.

orbisvicis

Which with the noun after it is rare, but in every case omitting the noun preserves the meaning while generating more commonplace sentences. I think the most common usage is "of which", in which (heh) the noun is omitted.

bitwize

I use this form of "which" all the time.

noobermin

So...I'm pretty sure I've used "which" in this very way before.

dclowd9901

I do see usages of which in these cases only with the addition of prepositions to tie things together more cohesively.

Take the example case: “Upon the submission of the cause the appellant made a motion to amend its assignments of error, which motion is now granted.”

In 2023, I would expect this to read “Upon the submission of the cause the appellant made a motion to amend its assignments of error, in which motion is now granted,” where “in” is the change.

sambeau

The most surprising thing I read here was that 'homicide' was a word in 1390, so older than English itself.

killjoywashere

Which 'wich?

lifechoseme123

Any article with a headline ending with Question mark is:

- unoriginal & low value

- written by a low quality author

- edited by a low quality editor

- defaults to an answer of NO

stop the question mark BS