I want to know if the following is an interrogative adjective:

"Which is yours?"

I believe this is an interrogative adjective as "yours" is a pronoun.

Please help.

Your question is confusing:

Interrogative pronoun
I want to know if the following is an interrogative adjective:

Which are we talking about here?


Which is yours? : 'which' is an Interrogative pronoun

Which car will you buy? " 'which' is an Interrogative adjective

Thank you for your reply Claire. I do agree my question was confusing.

I will reframe my question.

I want to know the function of 'which' in the sentence : "Which is yours?". Does 'which' function here as a pronoun or an adjective?

As I understand, the rule for an interrogative adjective is that it should be followed by a noun or a pronoun. In this case, 'which' is followed by a pronoun 'yours'. So, does 'which' function here as an adjective? If yes, 'which' is not an interrogative pronoun but an interrogative adjective.

Please clarify this for me.

An adjective comes immediately before the noun - the noun follows immediately after.

A small red car is parked in my driveway.


"Which is yours?" : 'which' is an Interrogative pronoun - 'yours' comes AFTER the verb - there is no noun or pronoun immediately after 'which'.

"Which car will you buy?" : " 'which' is an Interrogative adjective, coming immediately before the noun 'car'.

That's the difference between when it acts as an adjective, and when it is a pronoun.

Thank you Claire.

It's neither! It's called a 'fused determiner-head'.

Despite what trad grammars may say, there is no such thing as 'interrogative pronoun which'. The "which" of "Which is yours" is a fused determiner-head. "Which" differs from all the other interrogative words in having a property that's 'selective'. In other words, the head noun that it refers to is selected from some definite set, which is contextually identifiable, for example:

"There are many houses in that road. Which (house) is yours?"

Here "which" is clearly determiner to "house" but "house" can be omitted to give your example "Which is yours?"

In that example, the determiner "which" is combined or 'fused' with the head "house". That is, the single word "which" is both determiner and head. Hence, the name 'fused-head'.

Sorry if that's a tad complex, but English grammar is sometimes like that!

PaulM

Or.....................

In "Which car is yours?", which is an interrogative adjective.

In "Which is yours?", which is an interrogative pronoun.


Stick with that.

This forum is starting to have too many cooks.

Sorry GM, but I wouldn't go along with you on that either.

In traditional grammar, determinatives form a subclass of adjectives. Thus the "which" in "Which car is yours"? was treated as a kind of adjective based on some vague idea that it 'modified' the noun "car" (which it doesn't). But in modern grammar, determinatives are treated as a distinct primary group, so this "which" is a determinative, not an adjective.

In the case of "Which is yours"?, things are a tad complicated. The crucial thing about "which" is that it differs from all the other interrogative words in having a property called 'selective', implying that the answer to the question is to be selected from some definite set; in this case the set is "some cars". Function-wise, this "which" is called a 'fused determiner-head', so in a tree diagram, "which" would carry the function label 'Determiner-Head' and the category label 'Deteminative'.



PaulM