pronouns - 'Which', 'whose' or something else?


I would appreciate your help phrasing the following:



I am looking for elements which/whose/... size/sizes is/are relatively large.




Answer



Whose is the way to go here. Merriam-Webster defines it as follows:



of or relating to whom or which especially as possessor or possessors



Which wouldn't work, because it doesn't indicate possession. It would work, however, if the phrase read:



I am looking for elements which are relatively large (in size).



As to the "size is" vs "sizes are", I would say that both are grammatically correct, though the singular is preferred. The Google stats look as follows:



  • "are * whose sizes are" — 94,700

  • "are * whose size is" — 1,020,000


Searching the British National Corpus returns four results for "whose size is" (one of which is actually used with a plural noun, "segments whose size is"), but none for "whose sizes are".


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