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[4] Today, relative whose can still refer to non-persons (e.g., the car whose door won't open). The spelling 'who' does not correspond to the word's pronunciation /huː/; it is the spelling that represents the expected outcome of hwā, while the pronunciation represents a divergent outcome – for details see Pronunciation of English wh .
The choice of relative pronoun typically depends on whether the antecedent is human or non-human: for example, who and its derivatives (whom, whoever, etc.—apart from whose) are generally restricted to human antecedents, while which and what and their derivatives refer in most cases to things, including animals.
The words who, whom, whose, what and why, can all be considered to come from a single Old English word hwā, reflecting its masculine and feminine nominative (hwā), dative (hwām), genitive (hwæs), neuter nominative and accusative (hwæt), and instrumental (masculine and neuter singular) (hwȳ, later hwī) respectively. [6]
The English pronouns form a relatively small category of words in Modern English whose primary semantic function is that of a pro-form for a noun phrase. [1] Traditional grammars consider them to be a distinct part of speech, while most modern grammars see them as a subcategory of noun, contrasting with common and proper nouns.
The English personal pronouns are a subset of English pronouns taking various forms according to number, person, case and grammatical gender. Modern English has very little inflection of nouns or adjectives, to the point where some authors describe it as an analytic language, but the Modern English system of personal pronouns has preserved some of the inflectional complexity of Old English and ...
The interrogative words who, whom, whose, what and which are interrogative pronouns when used in the place of a noun or noun phrase. In the question Who is the leader?, the interrogative word who is a interrogative pronoun because it stands in the place of the noun or noun phrase the question prompts (e.g. the king or the woman with the crown).
Users of the inanimate whose employ it as a relative pronoun with non-personal antecedents, as in: "That's the car whose alarm keeps waking us up at night." Those who avoid using whose with non-personal antecedents assert that it is the genitive (possessive) of only the relative pronoun who. They employ alternatives such as of which the, as in: [1]
Who's Who, the oldest listing of prominent British people since 1849; people who have died since 1897 are listed in Who Was Who; Cambridge Who's Who (also known as Worldwide Who's Who), a vanity publisher based in Uniondale, New York