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What does the relative pronoun "who" here refer to? why ?

  1. instructors ?
  2. course masters and instructors ?

Much time is dedicated to interactive and practical training under the supervision of course masters and instructors, who are all internationally recognized European or American specialists.

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    NASA trainees consist of men and women who are tops in their respective fields. The men are vagabonds dragged in off the street; it is only the women who are tops in their fields.
    – TimR
    Commented Jan 1 at 15:57
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    Because you've got your comma AFTER course masters and instructors, it's obvious they're being treated as a "collective" entity modified by the following wh- clause. If that final clause only applied to instructors, at the very least you'd have to remove the comma. OR, to avoid any potential ambiguity, put the comma after masters. That prevents the scope of the wh- clause from extending back to include course masters as well as instructors.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jan 1 at 17:10

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Because course masters and instructors are mentioned together, the description almost certainly refers to both groups.

If it was intended to refer only to the instructors, I would expect the two to be separated in some way -

...under the supervision of course masters, and of instructors who are all recognized...

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  • And simple logic tells us that if instructors are well-recognized, so are course masters.
    – Yosef Baskin
    Commented Jan 1 at 16:13
  • @KateBunting Is '' course masters and instructors '' a noun phrase? There is a conjunction '' and '' in between. because the relative pronoun replaces the noun or noun phrase?
    – emilywenly
    Commented Jan 1 at 16:28
  • No, because it contains two nouns.
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Jan 1 at 17:03
  • A coordination of two noun phrases can be regarded as a (larger) noun phrase.
    – nschneid
    Commented Jan 1 at 21:01

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