Here’s a rather tough question in advanced English grammar posed by Forum member Forces20 sometime ago:
“What do you call the combination of the preposition and the relative pronoun ‘which’ in such forms as ‘in which,’ ‘on which,’ and ‘with which’? I am confident that I can use some of these forms correctly in written composition and oral communication, but can you give a comprehensive explanation of their usage in the sentences below?
“1. ‘Equilibrium is a situation
in which the quantity of supply equals that of demand.’
“2. ‘Price floor is the lowest price set by the government
at which a producer can sell a good or service.’
“3. ‘A reservoir of psychic
from which they draw a positive outlook in life.’
“4. ‘Words are pegs
upon which we hang ideas.’
“5. ‘Some writers base their fiction on actual events
to which they add up invented characters, dialogue, settings, and plots.’”
Here’s my reply to Forces20:I’m not aware of a specific term for the combination of prepositions and relative pronouns in the sentences you presented. At any rate, such grammatical structures as “on which,” “from which,” and “with which” are a way in formal written English for introducing a defining relative clause and linking it efficiently to a main clause that typically ends in a noun—a construction that makes the pronoun “which” the object of the preposition in the defining relative clause. These structures are a powerful device for combining ideas that would otherwise need to be said in two sentences.
Consider the following sentences: “Boracay is a white-sand beach. The hotel chain built a five-start resort-hotel
on it.” In formal writing, these two sentences can be combined into a single sentence using the form “on which,” as follows: “Boracay is a white-sand beach
on which the hotel chain built a five-start resort-hotel.”
When the defining relative clause refers to a place, a perfectly acceptable alternative to “on which” as combiner is the relative pronoun “where”: “Boracay is a white-sand beach
where the hotel chain built a five-start resort-hotel.” In contrast, a misshapen, awkward-sounding (but not grammatically wrong) sentence results when we combine those two sentences using the subordinating conjunction “that” instead: “Boracay is a white-sand beach
that the hotel chain built a five-start resort-hotel
on.”*
This grammatical construction with the preposition “on” at the tail end of the sentence is an example of what’s called
preposition-stranding, which is frowned upon in formal written English. Nowadays, however, preposition-stranding is widely used by English speakers in colloquial situations, as in the following sentence: “This is the chapter where that passage
was taken from.” Formal writing, however, shuns such preposition-stranding and uses the “from which” form instead: “This is the chapter
from which that passage was taken.”
Now let’s reverse the process and analyze the sentences you gave as examples for “at which” and “upon which” usage. This one-sentence construction, “Price floor is the lowest price set by the government
at which a producer can sell a good or service,” used “at which” to combine these two sentences: “A price floor has been set by the government for producer goods or services. This is lowest price that producers can sell them.” On the other hand, this other one-sentence construction, “Words are pegs
upon which we hang ideas,” used “upon which” to combine these two sentences: “Words are pegs. We hang ideas upon them.”
At this point, of course, it would be logical to ask: Why bother using such combinations of preposition and relative pronoun as “in which” and “with which” when we could very well use simpler sentence-combining forms like “that,” “where,” and “when”?
HOW THE “ON WHICH” AND “THAT WHICH” PHRASES WORK AS CONNECTIVES OF IDEAS
The reason is simply to find the most suitable way to combine two or more ideas into a single sentence—and the clearer and more concise way we can find, the better for our written and spoken English.
This essay first appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the print and online editions of the June 11, 2011 issue of The Manila Times
, © 2011 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.------------
*The Forum begs the pardon of readers for the incidental use of this passage sometime back about the famous Philippine resort-island of Boracay. Starting this April 26, 2018, the whole island will be closed for six months for massive cleanup and rehabilitation. Watch for its reopening.
