Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Is the sentence correct? "Certain caves have a particular fascination for those people which have a belief in finding the treasure in them."

Certain caves have a particular fascination
for those people which have a belief in finding the treasure in
them.


1. Grammatically, this sentence is in
error since the relative pronoun which always refers to inanimate
objects and cannot correctly be used to refer to people as is done in the sentence
above.  Therfore, which should be changed to
who


In addition to this error, there
is another minor one. Although in many languages such as the Romance languages, nouns
must be preceded by an article such as the or a
or an, the article is not used in English when a noun is
used in a general sense as is the noun treasure.  Therefore,
eliminating the is advised.


2.
Stylistically, the relative clause could use some revision which would improve the
clarity of the sentence.  While there are different ways to rewrite this clause, here
are a couple of suggestions:


a) Certain caves
have a particular fascination for people who believe these caves contain
treasure
.


b) Certain caves
have a particular fascination for people who believe there is treasure in
them
.


The advantage of using (a) is
that 


  1. the pronoun them has
    been eliminated, thus removing an ambiguity.  For, the use of nouns over pronouns is
    preferable in communication as pronouns sometimes are unclear as to their antecedents. 

  2. Also, the relative clause has been shorted and made more
    succinct for better communication, as well.

(b)
has made the relative clause more concise and a bit stronger in meaning, using
believe
as the predicate rather than the verb
have.

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