3.which的用法

首先看87年高考试题:

Finally,the thief handed everything______he had stolen to the police.

A.which

B.what

C.whatever

D.that

看到此题，学生们可能毫不犹豫地选择that，理由是不定代词和强调句中不能使用which，而最好使用that。诚然，在上述两种情况下，主要使用that，但并不意味着使用which就是错误的。事实上，一些名人或名著经常使用which。许多参考书作者或命题人不善于观察和阅读，对事实视而不见。下面是几位语言学家使用的句子：

1.If there is anything which the child can be said to be acquiring,it is a range of potential,which we could refer to as his“meaning potential”.（Michael Halliday　Language and Social Man）

2.It is the demands posed by the service of these functions which have molded the shape of language and fixed the course of its evolution.（同上）

3.It is this fundamental insight which lies behind Professor Bernstein’s theoretical and empirical work in the field of language and society.

4.There is nothing,but nothing,in the dialect as such,which prevents a child from internalizing and learning to use universalistic meanings.（Bernstein）

5.It is the speaker’s pragmatic competence which enables him to bring into play nonlinguistic information in the interpretation of such sentences.（Andrew Radford　Transformational Syntax）

6.Nevertheless,it is the spoken language which is fundamental.（E.K.Brown and J.E.Miller）

请接着看名人或名著用的句子：

1.John Rockefeller was a bookkeeper making twenty-five dollars a month.It was his goals which drove him to become the master of an oil industry.（Lewis Timberlake　Born to Win）

2.It is that something which matters most to its future–which calls forth the most sacred guarding of its present.（Franklin D.Roosevelt）

3.It was that belief which had led me into organizing,and it was that belief which would lead me to conclude….（Barack Obama）

4.It is not the adjective,but the substantive,which is of real importance.It is not the name of the action,but the result of the action,which is the chief concern.（Calvin Coolidge）

5.For these reasons the expenses of the army and navy and of coast defenses should always be considered as something which the Government must pay for….（William Taft）

6.A person with a goal has something which gives him the courage to climb out of the pit of darkness and keep going.（Born to Win）

7.It is not so much the actual population of the world but its rate of increase which is important.（L.Stamp）

8.…the assumption used to be,as Weber argued,that it was Confucianism which was responsible for Asia’s economic torpor,because….（Chris Pattern）

这样的例子有很多，英国50年代外务大臣Anthony Eden在回忆录Memoirs中多次这样使用which，如：

1.After we had discussed these matters for some time,Bulganin said that he wanted to say something to me which he had said to nobody else.

2.This is something which we know,in our bones,we cannot do.

3.…he was ready to do anything which might assist in the creation of a European army,short of British participation.

4.The problem,as I expressed it in a telegram to the Prime Minister on February 13th,was‘to find something which will meet the bear without parting from the eagle’.

5.Yet it was the Communist Party which had probably gained most and the Prime Minister soon found the rabble-rousers eager to claim authority.

6.It is this surge of confidence and expansion,healthy enough in itself,which has produced the unfamiliar problems with which we are now grappling.

我们有必要怀疑他的英文水平吗？

New Concept English第三册前言部分有：

He（a student）should never be required to do anything which is beyond his capacity.

该册第59课有：

Indeed they can have a delightful surprise when they find something useful which they did not know they owned.

看来作者L.G.Alexander也犯“语法错误”！这样使用which的例子还有很多。可以得出的结论是：该用法没有that常用，但完全是可接受的，不能认为是错误用法。

一种新的用法是which用于定语从句，而该定语从句是个独立的句子或段落，指代前面的一段文字：

1.She’s wise that way,my grandmother,suspicious of overwrought sentiments or overblown claims,content with the common sense.Which is why I tend to trust her account of events….（Obama）

2.And something else,too,something nobody talked about…and the score only mattered because that’s how you sustained the trance.In the middle of which you might make a move or a pass that surprised even you,so that even the guy guarding you had to smile….（Obama）

3.A close ally of left-leaning Chavez,Rodriguez was president and general secretary of the OPEC before he took over at PDVSA last April.Which means that he will not necessarily be inspired to turn on more spigots just to make life easier for the Bush Administration.（ForbesJan 2003）

4.Advocates of the change say fund managers will become more vigilant in fighting corporate abuse.But that’s already happening.What the change will endanger is higher fees for investors as fund managers devote more resources to legal bills and fending off pressure groups.

All of which underscores the need for curbing the pillaging,justice-polluting,locust-like practices of trial lawyers.

5.But,again,why limit these unions to adults?Isn’t that just part of that old archaic religious notion that only adults should experience the pressure of marriage?Why shouldn’t children be allowed to marry?Isn’t that age discrimination?

Which brings us back to where we started.The only taboo left at that point will be marriages outside the species.（The Rochester TimesJanuary 2,2003）

that which连用的现象经常出现，意义上接近what：

It is human,perhaps,to appreciate little that which we have and to long for that which we have not.（Helen Keller）

…used as a function word to indicate that which is dealt with as the object of thought,feeling or action.（Webster）