Questions concerning 'which'

Question

HiIn the following nominal phrases (are they nominal phrases?), what parts of speech are the 'that' and 'which'?That which was chosen / That which is bothersomeAnd also, how would you describe 'which' in these nominal(?) phrases (and why is the preposition placed where it is?):The platform on which he sang / the bed into which he crawled / the cup in which the coffee steamed, etc

Avangi · Accepted Answer

AnonymousThat which was chosen / That which is bothersome

Since they're capitalized, I assume the "Thats" come at the beginning of the sentence, and are not relative pronouns.
It would help if the sentences were complete, but I'm willing to stipulate that "That" is the subject of the sentence, and is a demonstrative pronoun.

If you say "That thing on the table is disgusting," then "That" is a demonstrative adjective.

But you can also say, "That on the table is disgusting."

"On the table" would be a prepositional phrase qualifying the subject, "That."

Instead of a prepositional phrase, we have a relative clause, "which was chosen."

"Which" is a relative pronoun, referring to the subject, "That";

and it's also the subject of the relative clause.

We need a main verb.

As we can say that "That" is the simple subject, we can say that "That which was chosen" (so far as we know) is the complete subject.

But without the capitals, these phrases could both be objects.

So do you mean "nominal" in the sense of case? (I guess that would be "nominative.")

He kills that which is bothersome.

That which was chosen will be delivered.

AnonymousThe platform on which he sang / the bed into which he crawled / the cup in which the coffee steamed, etc

There was no spotlight for the platform which he sang on.

This is considered grammatical these days. There was a time when it was frowned on to place the preposition at the end.

We have several threads on this issue.

Regarding "which" in your last group, I'm not up on the standard explanation.

I see it as object of the preposition, the prepositional phrase acting as an adverb. (the platform where he sang)

I may be wrong here. My dictionary calls "where" a conjunction in "the platform where he sang."

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