What or which?

Question

Hi, teachers. I am confused with the following one:
As for the winter, it is inconvenient to be cold, with most of ___ furnace fuel is allowed saved for the dawn.

A. what B. which

To my ear, both do work there. But the given answer is what.
Kindly do me a favor.
Thank you in advance.

Terryxpress · Accepted Answer

Let me understand: why do you think both work in the sentence?

LouiST · Answer

If she knew the answer why both were correct she would not be asking.

CalifJim · Answer

louiST If she knew the answer why both were correct, she would not be asking.

louiST,

Your English is really getting good!
That's a perfectly constructed second conditional.
(But you do need the comma.)

CJ

Norwolf · Answer

Funny.
Actually, I can't give you guys the reason. What I know is just that we can say both "well, which furnace fuel" and "what furnace fuel".
A shame.

Enoon · Answer

You are being led astray by "most of which is allowed." This is not "most of which is allowed". This is "most of the furnace fuel that is allowed", which can be expressed as "most of what furnace fuel is allowed".

CalifJim · Answer

"what furnace fuel is allowed" connotes a shortage, scarcity. You have to consider the meaning of the sentence as a whole and determine whether something in it implies a shortage or scarcity, an amount that is less than enough or an amount that is not much. In this case it seems that the people that figure in the story were not allowed very much furnace fuel.

With expressions like this, what is the proper word, not which. It can be paraphrased as whatever or however much/many.

Compare:

After sharing what little food they had, the couple let the visitors sleep in their bed where they could have a good night's rest. Here the shortage of food is emphasized with the word little.

Times were tough, and families had taken to staying indoors rationing out what meager resources they had left.
Here the words rationing out and meager emphasize the idea that there were not enough resources.

Behind the lines, the defense of Stalingrad became a national cause, with citizens donating what valuables they had. The sentence is obviously about wartime conditions. The citizens did not have many valuables, but they donated the few that they had.

Therefore the captain went down to the shore and hastily sailed away with what loot they had got. This could be from a story about pirates. The writer wants us to realize that the captain had not got much loot and that he had no time to get more. Maybe his thievery had been discovered and he had to make a quick getaway. The captain had to be satisfied with less loot than he would have liked.

They built for him a shed, and they fed him on what lambs they had that year. The writer wants to show us that they did not have many lambs that year, but even so the people were willing to share.

The peasants responded by slaughtering their animals and destroying what grain they had. This appears to be from a story about some social upheaval. Even though the peasants didn't have much grain, they destroyed it. (They may have done this to make a political point; this isolated sentence isn't enough to give us the full story.)

The lieutenant and a friend, on being released, realized that what valuables they had might be tempting targets for thieves. In this case the implication is that they only had a few valuables. Not many. So they were understandably concerned about those few valuables being stolen.
___________________

Don't confuse the usage above with these:

By studying fossils archaeologists and anthropologists can learn about what animals people ate. There is no implication of scarcity here. The writer could just as easily have written: ... learn about which animals people ate.

I saw a few people telling the doctor what symptoms they had. Again, this is not about a shortage or scarcity of symptoms. A shortage of symptoms makes no sense. The writer could have written: ... which symptoms they had.
_________

Usually in cases like the two immediately above, the choice between what and which depends on whether there is a list (or we can imagine a list) from which something is selected. what identifies; which selects. So, in reference to those two sentences, learn about what animals people ate takes the viewpoint of identifying the animals; learn about which animals people ate takes the viewpoint of selecting animals from a list of animals (probably those which lived in prehistoric times, given the subject matter). Likewise, saying which symptoms implies a universe of discourse in which only certain symptoms were of any interest to the doctor.
_________

In the following cases, scarcity is not implied by anything in the sentences, but which is not used because there is no focus on selecting (from a list of powers or from a list of assets, respectively).

We may ask ourselves what power they had over us.
They decided to deal with the federal government to see what assets they had.

CJ

LouiST · Answer

CalifJimYour English is really getting good!That's a perfectly constructed second conditional.

REALLY???

Thanks!!!:D Nice of you,
Louis

Norwolf · Answer

Dear Jim, thank you. There you are, always giving me a big hand.
According to what you say, the case refers to an exclamation sentence or an emphatic sentence, if I didn’t take it wrongly.
My English teacher from China told me: what = the…which, meaning it has something to do with the structure, because furnace fuel needs an article while is allowed needs a subject.
Do you agree with him?

CalifJim · Answer

norwolfMy English teacher from China told me: what = the…which, meaning it has something to do with the structure, because furnace fuel needs an article while is allowed needs a subject.Do you agree with him?

Yes. That's an acceptable paraphrase, and it's sufficient if you don't want to get into the matter of usage, which I told you about above.

CJ

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