[email protected] wrote:Hi,
Can anyone explain me the use of "what" as a pronoun?
Regards,
Mukherjee
Hello!
These are some notes on pronouns that might be helpful in your query.
"IT" is a personal pronoun and it indicates EXACTLY THE SAME thing that was mentioned earlier.
I know that you bought a new book and I want to have a look at it. ---- "it" indicates exactly the same book mentioned earlier.
"THAT" is a demonstrative pronoun and somewhere I saw a very good expression describing it: A NEW COPY pronoun.
We are still talking about one class of things, but we do not mean exactly the same thing mentioned earlier; rather, we talk about something new but of the same kind.
Shirley's book and that of Mary were of two different genres.
"WHAT" is a relative pronoun. It doesn't require an antecedent. So it is not tightly connected with anything mentioned earlier in the sentence.
"WHAT"-phrase is usually an object in the sentence (it might be an object of verb or an object of preposition).
After "what" there is usually something that helps us understand what the author of the sentence means by "what":
I know what you want. ---- I know [object]
[object] = [what you want]
Let's get to the bottom of what is happening to you. ----- Let's get to the bottom of [object]
(*this sentence is too colloquial for the GMAT; however, we still can learn from its structure)
[object] = [what is happening to you]
Also, "WHAT" sometimes comes before a noun:
It is not clear to what extent these views were shared.
"What extent" refers to the degree of extent. The degree of extent is not clear.
This last sentence is from Longman Dictionary.
I haven't encountered this usage of "what" on the GMAT yet.
Sentences with "WHAT" are often incorrect on the GMAT. They are considered wordy/indirect and usually there is a way to rewrite a sentence that looks and sounds better without "what".
However, I wouldn't eliminate a choice just because it contains "what".
"WHAT" might appear in a correct answer!
Look up problem 72, OG13 "His studies of ice-polished rocks in his Alpine homeland".
