[General] The windows of which vs , the windows of which

[MichaelLu2000]

Hello everyone.

I would like to ask a question about the usage of of which, and of which with a comma before it.

This is a sentence that I made up.

"This is the house the windows of which were broken by those kids last night".

I have also seen some posts that say there should always be a comma before "X of which" in this kind of sentence.

They claim it can only be correct if we change the sentence to this:

This is the house, the windows of which were broken by those kids last night.

However, although I am not a native speaker, I think "of which" with or without a comma actually entails different meanings and doesn't necessary make either of them wrong. They just apply to different contexts.

For example,

EX1
A: I have heard that some kids were vandalizing a house in the neighborhood last night! The broke all the windows. Where is the house?
B: Well, right in front of you. This is the house the windows of which were all broken by them.

Vesus

EX2
I was so tried so I decided to find a place to rest for a while. Then I walked into an old church, the windows of which were all broken.

It seems that the first conversation refers to a house that has a particular feature (broken windows) that was already known by both of the speakers. It's not necessary to put a comma before "of which" because we are talking about a specific house that has broken windows.

On the other hand, in the second example, the speaker walked into an old church. "the windows of which" were inserted to further describe the building in detail, but it doesn't imply that it's a specific church with broken windows.

Have I distinguished between them correctly?

Any advice is welcome.

 

[Rover_KE]

Whilst we're waiting for a grammarian to analyse the finer points of this thread, I wonder if you realise that you can avoid the dilemma by saying 'This is the house whose windows were broken last night'.

 

[MichaelLu2000]

Incidentally, B1 sounds very clunky.

Do you mean that the sentence is not grammatically correct or simply too long?

 

[GoesStation]

B1: Well, right in front of you. This is the house the windows of which were all broken by them.

Incidentally, B1 sounds very clunky.

Do you mean that the sentence is not grammatically correct or simply too long?

A native speaker would never write that sentence. The passive voice makes it extremely wordy and clumsy, and its arrangement is not at all natural. The reader has to go through it two or three times to make sense of it.

You could say the same thing with 23% fewer words like this: This is the house where they broke all the windows.

 

[Phaedrus]

You could say the same thing with 23% fewer words like this: This is the house where they broke all the windows.

That sentence could be true even if none of the windows of the house were broken.

Maybe those kids just brought some windows to the house and broke them there.

 

[MichaelLu2000]

A native speaker would never write that sentence. The passive voice makes it extremely wordy and clumsy, and its arrangement is not at all natural. The reader has to go through it two or three times to make sense of it.

You could say the same thing with 23% fewer words like this: This is the house where they broke all the windows.

What if I change the tense:

This is the house the windows of which the kids broke last night.

 

[SoothingDave]

You keep insisting on trying to use this construction when you have been given shorter and far more natural alternatives.

 

[GoesStation]

What if I change the tense:

This is the house [STRIKE]the[/STRIKE] whose windows [STRIKE]of which[/STRIKE] the kids broke last night.

The above is something a native speaker might say. Your version is grammatical but unnatural.