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a. The novelist the number of whose published novels we did not know started speaking.

b. The novelist the number of novels published by whom we did not know started speaking.

c. The novelist the number of whose published novels was not known to us started speaking.

d. The novelist the number of novels published by whom was unknown to us started speaking.

There was a group of novelists. We did not know how many novels this one particular novelist had published. That was the novelist who started speaking. We are basically defining the novelist who started speaking. He was the one who had written a number of novels but we didn't know how many.

Are the sentences a-d grammatical? Do they break any rule of grammar? Would they ever be used? Are they comprehensible?

I don't think they are ungrammatical, but I suspect they are just too convoluted to be used.

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    They look fine to me, and if that is what you want to communicate (in one sentence), then it is hard for me to improve them, except I think commas would help.
    – Justin Stafford
    Dec 1, 2020 at 5:07

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I don't think they're ungrammatical, but they are unpunctuated.

The sentence(s) say

The novelist started speaking.

The writer/speaker wants to identify the novelist, so the qualification of which novelist is to be added. It's a clause that needs to be set off by commas:

The novelist, the number of whose published novels we did not know, started speaking.

I don't think it's too convoluted to use in writing.

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  • Thank you both so much. The problem with adding commas is that they would make the information inessential, but the idea is to say which of the novelists started speaking. We need a restrictive clause. THAT novelist and not any of the others.. In this context I don't think we need commas.
    – azz
    Dec 1, 2020 at 22:10
  • Without the commas, the sentence is horrible, and is likely to confuse. I think you're confusing essential logical information with essential grammatical structures. The fact that the part of the sentence is not required grammatically is different from saying that the information in the clause is not required logically to understand what is being said. Grammatically, this could be done several ways: "There was one novelist for whom we did not know the number of novels published. That novelist started speaking" "We didn't know how many novels the next speaker had published", etc.
    – rcook
    Dec 2, 2020 at 2:05
  • Thank you so much. Very interesting. This seems an interesting sentence: "There was one novelist for whom we did not know the number of novels published." I hadn't thought of that. Could one replace 'for' with 'about' in that sentence? Many thanks.
    – azz
    Dec 2, 2020 at 3:16
  • I believe you can. You can also put a semicolon between the two sentences, helping the reader connect the two thoughts. A semicolon can link two independent thoughts, i.e., two things that could be sentences by themselves.
    – rcook
    Dec 2, 2020 at 3:17
  • Thank you so much! I really appreciate this!
    – azz
    Dec 2, 2020 at 5:47

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