[Ads-l] weird "which"

[Jonathan Lighter]

This seems even weirder to me, Bethan.  The examples you give are of a kind
familiar to me from my university teaching days in the late '70s.
Whatever the syntactical explanation, both "whiches" can be replaced by
(and defined as) 'but.'  Exx. meaning 'and' are also possible.

But the current case is not subject to an exclusively lexical analysis.
The sentence might be normalized in these ways and maybe others:

1.  "Including a full-size leave-in elixir, which nine out of ten women
said made their hair appear thicker and fuller in just one week!"

2.  "Including a full-size leave-in elixir, and nine out of ten women said
it made their hair appear thicker and fuller in just one week!"

 No. 2 is stylistically awkward but perfectly correct. But to get from one
of these normal constructions to the Viviscal version requires a
strange shift in understanding the meaning of "which." In No. 1 the elixir
is the focus; in No. 2 both the elixir and the comments are equally in
focus.

But the Viviscal version seems to focus equally on the elixir and on the
hair.  It feels like something between subordination and conjunction.
A simple "and" or "but" won't fix it.  And, as I suggested, it's appearance
in a TV commercial is, well, astounding, because it suggests that a number
of copywriters agreed that it sounded just fine.

JL



On Tue, Jun 23, 2020 at 7:09 AM Bethan Tovey-Walsh <accounts at bethan.wales>
wrote:

> I've noticed this one a lot online, apparently from U.S.-English speakers
> in particular. I suspect that it's a reanalysis of the standard "which" as
> a relative pronoun into "which" as a conjunction meaning approximately "in
> relation to which", "as a result of which", etc.. So instead of
> understanding "which" as the object of the main clause, it's understood as
> a conjunction linking a main clause to the preceding noun phrase. I've seen
> quite a few examples along the lines of:
>
> "She told me to go, which I was not going to do that."
> "They said they were stealing, which my kids would totally not steal
> anything."
>
> It seems to me that the step from "[noun phrase], which I wasn't going to
> do" to "[noun phrase], which I wasn't going to do that" is a fairly small
> one. I'd be interested to hear your opinions.
>
> BTW
>
> ___________________________________________________
> Dr. Bethan Tovey-Walsh
>
> Myfyrwraig PhD | PhD Student CorCenCC
> Prifysgol Abertawe | Swansea University
>
> CV: LinkedIn
>
> Croeso i chi ysgrifennu ataf yn y Gymraeg.
> On 23 Jun 2020, 10:55 +0100, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>,
> wrote:
> > Weird to me, anyway, especially in a pricey, presumably carefully edited
> TV
> > commercial for a glamour hair product:
> >
> > "Including a full-size leave-in elixir which nine out of ten women said
> > their hair appeared thicker and fuller in just one week!"
> >
> > JL
> >
> > --
> > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org