workers who were sent or workers that were sent?

Question

I am trying to determine the use of "that" or "who" in this sentence: Workers ____ were sent did not speak English.

Possible duplicate of Should you use "who" or "that" when talking about multiple people doing something? Also How to use “who” vs. “that”, and doubtless several others. — FumbleFingers, Feb 10 '16 at 15:32
Depends whether the workers are human or bees (or whether you know individual bees and think of them as persons). — Drew, Feb 10 '16 at 15:59

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 10 '16 at 15:35

2

With human head nouns it's a free choice between wh-relatives and that-relatives: Workers who were sent did not speak English and Workers that were sent did not speak English show no semantic differences, and no syntactic differences.

answered Feb 10 '16 at 15:35

BillJ

12,832

workers who were sent or workers that were sent?

1 Answers1