0

At later lessons we would be given a printed slip of paper entitled “Search the Scriptures,“ which was sent to the school by whatever national authority supervised the teaching of religion. (source)

This sentence strikes me as ungrammatical and missing the relative pronoun "which/that" that should follow "national authority". Shouldn't it be like this?

At later lessons we would be given a printed slip of paper entitled “Search the Scriptures,“ which was sent to the school by whatever national authority that supervised the teaching of religion.

Improve this question
1
  • Which is referring to the paper, not to the authority.
    – Davo
    Commented Nov 27, 2018 at 14:21

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

The presence of "whatever" changes the dynamic. If "whatever" had been "the", then you would be correct and the sentence would have to be:

by the national authority which supervised the teaching of religion

But "whatever + noun" is functioning as a relative pronoun here, and so the sentence is correct as it is. Here's another example:

Please put me in touch with whatever person sent me that email.

Improve this answer
2
  • Yes, this is a 'fused' relative construction. The fusion involves "whatever national authority" (where "whatever" is a determinative) which serves simultaneously as head of the larger NP and as the wh phrase at the beginning of the relative clause.
    – BillJ
    Commented Nov 27, 2018 at 17:56
  • I would have called whatever an indeterminative.
    – TimR
    Commented Nov 27, 2018 at 19:22

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .