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The choice between whose and of which to express a genitive relationship with a nonpersonal antecedent is only briefly commented on in the grammatical literature. The Relativizers Whose and Of Which in Present-Day English: Description and Theory is aMoreThe choice between whose and of which to express a genitive relationship with a nonpersonal antecedent is only briefly commented on in the grammatical literature. The Relativizers Whose and Of Which in Present-Day English: Description and Theory is a corpus-based study which analyses the use of these two relativizers in written and spoken present-day English, British and American. The study shows that whose and of which are typical of the written medium, where they are considerably more frequent than in spoken discourse. Whose is mainly used in written scientific texts but neither whose nor of which is as rare in writing as is often claimed in grammars. Whose and of which are infrequent in spoken discourse primarily because they are part of complex constructions. The structural complexity of the relative clause with whose and of which also entails informational complexity, which makes such a clause less likely to be used in speech. Whose is more frequent than of which, irrespective of medium, mainly because of the difference in formal set-up between the two relativizers. The positional patterning of of which is checked against a theoretical account within generative grammar (Government and Binding). The present study also takes the analysis a step further by discussing what spoken language uses instead of whose and of which. Relative and non-relative alternatives are discussed as such, and also according to the Accessibility Hierarchy theory. Relative clauses with whose and of which are the least accessible relative clauses, i.e. they are comparatively difficult to produce and understand, which may explain why they are rare in speech. Alternatives to whose and of which are usually not considered in the grammatical literature. The Relativizers Whose and of Which in Present-Day English: Description and Theory by Christine Johansson