1

Further,as from 1 January 1958 or the earliest practicable date thereafter, contracting parties shall cease to grant either directly or indirectly any form of subsidy on the export of any product other than a primary product WHICH subsidy results in the sale of such product for export at a price lower than the comparable price charged for the like product to buyers in the domestic market.

It's an official WTO article. I'm confused of the WHICH here. I thought it should be a WHOSE. Is it an adjective clause?

7orange
  • 11
  • This use of which seems to be an example of legalese. There is a discussion of the same issue elsewhere on this site: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/74357/why-does-legal-english-sometimes-repeat-the-antecedent-noun-after-which – Shoe Mar 26 '19 at 08:33
  • It's not the same use here. I think it may be the use that the post linked to was trying to ask about, but if so the poster used a bad example. In this example from the WTO, the part beginning with which is a restrictive relative clause. The provision applies to subsidies which a) apply to the export of any product other than a primary product AND b) result in the sale of such product for export at a price lower... –  Mar 26 '19 at 09:37
  • @Minty. I agree that the question I linked to did not have a particularly good example. In fact, was going to suggest the following instead https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/71095/is-which-noun-correct, which did have a similar usage. But this was marked as a duplicate and I wasn't sure whether it is good practice here to link to such questions. – Shoe Mar 26 '19 at 09:55
  • @Shoe not intended as a criticism of you at all –  Mar 26 '19 at 10:12
  • Perhaps this can help? Imagine if it was phrased like this: "...other than a primary product, the subsidy of which results in the sale of such product..." Now that phrasing is clearly a grammatically correct usage of "which," directly following a preposition. The actual sentence you cited could perhaps be a contracted form of the alternate I've proposed. I'm sure the intention of the author was to be more clear, but I agree that it's actually more confusing. – Hee Jin Mar 26 '19 at 21:36

0 Answers0