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I am not confident about my judgement as to whether or not "the" is required if a relative clause is used in a sentence.
For example,

The data can be collected on all the computers on which the software is installed.

I think it must be "all the computers " and not be "all computers" because "computers" is specified by "on which the software is installed".

Please help me confirm that I am right.

RegDwigнt
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New darkhourse
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    I also think your sentence is right because of the reason you named: you are pointing to some computers with a specific software, not any computers in the sphere of the "world: computers". So the use of "the" in this sentence sounds right. – user3158 Mar 01 '14 at 15:26
  • I think it's acceptable either way. – Barmar Mar 02 '14 at 07:31
  • Thank you for your comments, user3158 and Barmar. Now I think that I have stuck in between grammer and sound. I thought it is grammatically ok with "the", and it sounds ok in either way. – New darkhourse May 12 '14 at 11:34

1 Answers1

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You are correct. If you wanted to remove "the" it would be better to slightly reword the last half of the sentence:

The data can be collected on all computers which have the software installed.

The key difference is the "on which":

The data can be collected on all computers on which the software is installed.

A shorter example:

Find computers on which the software is installed.

This doesn't feel so very wrong that I would call it completely ungrammatical but it definitely works better with "the":

Find the computers on which the software is installed.

MrHen
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  • Mrhen, thank your for your detailed comments. I have never taken the way of thinking grammer as you mentioned above. When thinking "on which" as a key to the problem, it started to be clearer to me that I should put "the" or not. Very helpful,thank you again. – New darkhourse May 12 '14 at 11:44
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    @Newdarkhourse at least you can vote up the answer you liked or mark it correct if it worked for you :) – Mehdi Haghgoo Nov 05 '14 at 08:21