"which" as object of an infinitival relative clause

Stahlke, Herbert F.W. hstahlke at bsu.edu
Mon Nov 3 17:46:15 UTC 2003


There's been some discussion of infinitival relatives on the Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar list, an offshoot of NCTE.  The question that has arisen is whether infinitival relatives can have "which" as a direct object, as in 

1. ?*I bought a new Jeep which to drive.

which I find pretty awful.  It works fine if "which" is the object of a preposition 

2. I bought a new Jeep with which to drive to Alaska.  

But with a stranded preposition, 2 goes sour.

2a. *I bought a new Jeep which to drive to Alaska with.

I can get something pretty awkward like 

3. I bought that new Jeep, which to drive has turned out to be expensive.  

but that's as a non-restrictive.  With "that" I can get, using a resumptive pronoun, 

4. I bought a new Jeep that to drive it is turning out to be expensive.  

But I can't get "that" in 

5. *I bought a new Jeep that to drive to Alaska with.

although 6 is fine.

6. I bought a new Jeep to drive to Alaska with.

The difference in between 4 and 5 is probably that 4 contains a finite clause and 5 doesn't, hence the dropping of "that".

is fine.  "Which" works best as the object of a preposition (2).  3 and 4 are pretty bad, (5) is out, but 6 is fine.  I've checked Quirk and Biber on this without much success, and one of my GAs is currently using my Huddleston&Pullum, so I don't know what they have to offer on it.  Is "that" disallowed because the clause is non-finite?  Why would "which" be okay then, since it too has a subordinating conjunction role in relatives?  Why no prep-stranding with "which"?

Herb Stahlke



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