That or which?

Question

I visited the bar that/which my brother owns.Is 'that' what most would use?

AlpheccaStars · Accepted Answer

That would be my choice. In American English, it is the only grammatical choice.

BillJ · Answer

I visited the bar that/which my brother owns.

With non-personal heads in integrated (defining) relatives, it's generally a free choice.

"The bar that my brother owns" and "the bar which my brother owns" show no semantic differences, and no syntactic differences other than what follows from "that" not being a pronoun ("the bar to which I often go" is grammatical but "the bar to that I often go" is of course not).

I said "generally" because there are a couple of constructions where "that" is preferred, for example in "That fish is the biggest [(that) I've ever seen]", and "All [that I ask] is a little peace and quiet".

Incidentally, one of the most well-known cases of "which" occurring in an integrated relative came from no less a person than the US President Franklin F. Roosevelt, who famously remarked about the day of the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack:

"a date which will live in infamy"

That or which?

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