Grammar question[super](N)[/super]

[Lumpy]

What’s the proper way to indicate a component or part of an inanimate object, when you refer to the main object and the subsidiary part in different parts of the sentence? For example, if I say “I sold my car, whose engine was shot” using whose promotes my car to the status of personhood, and the fact that it had an engine to the possessive. That doesn’t look right, but what would be the alternative?

[barbitu8]

I think it best that you just reformulate the sentence, such as: “I sold my car because the engine was shot.” Or, “I sold my car, shot engine and all.” If you insist on your syntax, it would be: “I sold my car, which had a shot engine,” if that was the only car you had, but “I sold my car which (or that) had a shot engine” if you had more than one.

[lissener]

Whose is correct. Look it up in a dictionary, whose usage notes should give you permission to use the word in this way.

[lissener]

Sorry, barbitu8. From dictionary.com:

. . . It has sometimes been claimed that whose should be used only as the possessive form of who and should thus be restricted to animate antecedents, as in a man whose power has greatly eroded. But there is extensive literary precedent for the use of whose as the possessive of which, as in The play, whose style is rigidly formal, is typical of the period. In an earlier survey this example was acceptable to a large majority of the Usage Panel. The alternate form of which also can be used to this purpose, as in The play, the style of which is rigidly formal, is typical of the period. But as this example demonstrates, substituting of which for whose may result in stiltedness. . . .

[sailor]

Yes, I have always found this a bit strange. Using whose for things seems to sound strange but I cannot think of a better way. The car whose wheels were flat… it sound strange. I guess you can just reword it to avoid the possesive form: The car that had flat tires.

[lissener]

*Originally posted by sailor *
. . . I guess you can just reword it to avoid the possesive form . . .

[barbitu8]

I checked A Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage, by Bergan & Cornelia Evans:

When used as the possessie form of an interrogative pronoun, it refers only to persons. When used as the possessive form of a relative pronoun, it may refer to things as wells as to persns or animals. “A country whose rainfall is abundant” is better English than “a country, the rainfall of which is abundant.”

So, I stand corrected. But I still would rephrase it.