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Doubt regarding "which"

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Doubt regarding "which"

by abhi332 » Sat Mar 06, 2010 4:08 am
I have taken following sentence from NewYork times,


""Ms. Pelosi dismissed the criticism on Thursday that Democrats had not lived up to their promise to sweep away a culture of corruption on Capitol Hill. She also noted that she had established an outside group to receive complaints about members of Congress, which could be easily referred to the House ethics committee. ""

I had read that "which" can only refer to things also noun before the "which"should be as close as possible.

In above sentence closest noun to "which" is the "congress" also it's not a thing.

Please help me know what I am missing.
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by gmatmachoman » Sat Mar 06, 2010 4:11 am
abhi332 wrote:I have taken following sentence from NewYork times,


""Ms. Pelosi dismissed the criticism on Thursday that Democrats had not lived up to their promise to sweep away a culture of corruption on Capitol Hill. She also noted that she had established an outside group to receive complaints about members of Congress, which could be easily referred to the House ethics committee. ""

I had read that "which" can only refer to things also noun before the "which"should be as close as possible.

In above sentence closest noun to "which" is the "congress" also it's not a thing.

Please help me know what I am missing.
Dear Abhi,
here "which" refers to "complaints" .

Complaints is very much a Noun.
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by iamcste » Sat Mar 06, 2010 5:45 am
abhi332 wrote:I have taken following sentence from NewYork times,


""Ms. Pelosi dismissed the criticism on Thursday that Democrats had not lived up to their promise to sweep away a culture of corruption on Capitol Hill. She also noted that she had established an outside group to receive complaints about members of Congress, which could be easily referred to the House ethics committee. ""

I had read that "which" can only refer to things also noun before the "which"should be as close as possible.

In above sentence closest noun to "which" is the "congress" also it's not a thing.

Please help me know what I am missing.
Caveat: dont mug "which" and its popular usages, there are many exceptions..Infact, many a times "which" is a clearly laid trap...yes most popular concept tested is "which" v/s "present participle" modifier....

what I do is before looking at the noun that comes before "which", I usally check whether the noun is a part of the phrase that in turn describes some other noun, in such cases "which" is actually describes the noun which is being described..Follow this to your example and you will see that which actually refers to complaints...so now add an extra check while applying usage of which as an immediate preceding noun modifier.

HTH
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