another 'where' question

Hi, Navi,

@navi posted:

1) Unless you're Jim Carey or Robin Williams and you have that funny gene, where everything you do is funny.

"Where" is a rather loose relative adverb as well as conjunction. For example, in the texts my students translate they usually find this kind of structure: Where applicable, you may resort to the court. That "where" is not locative but temporal in meaning. I think that conjunction "where" is similar to "In the cases in which..."

In the sentence you are asking about (actually, it's not a sentence but a clause that is related to the surrounding text), "where," which I find to be a relative adverb, can be paraphrased as the much more formal "in which case..." I think that "where" is grammatical and natural (actually, more informal than "in which case").

@navi posted:

I put a comma before 'where'. Would you say it is necessary?

Yes, that comma is necessary because "having that funny gene" is a well-defined idea and the clause that follows merely adds information that explains what has been said. A comma would not be used in a sentence like this one, where the clause defines what precedes it:

- I don't have the (kind of) gene where everything I/you do is funny.

@Gustavo, Co-Moderator posted:

Hi, Navi,

"Where" is a rather loose relative adverb as well as conjunction. For example, in the texts my students translate they usually find this kind of structure: Where applicable, you may resort to the court. That "where" is not locative but temporal in meaning. I think that conjunction "where" is similar to "In the cases in which..."

In the sentence you are asking about (actually, it's not a sentence but a clause that is related to the surrounding text), "where," which I find to be a relative adverb, can be paraphrased as the much more formal "in which case..." I think that "where" is grammatical and natural (actually, more informal than "in which case").

Hi, Gustavo and navi,

A more modern approach is to treat "where" as a preposition. This classification is based on its locative meaning: "in/at/from some place".

Take, for example, its use in the fused relative construction We must put it [where no one will be able to see it].

This has a paraphrase containing noun + integrated relative We must put it in a place where no one will be able to see it.

The prepositional interpretation would then carry over to those relative clauses in which "where" does not have a locative meaning, such as in Navi's example.

Thank you for the information. I will not challenge modern grammarians but it is my understanding that, in all those constructions, "where" contains a preposition rather than being one.

@Gustavo, Co-Moderator posted:

Thank you for the information. I will not challenge modern grammarians but it is my understanding that, in all those constructions, "where" contains a preposition rather than being one.

I think it's preferable to say that "where" has a prepositional meaning, typically locative or directional, rather than saying that it contains a preposition.

Interestingly, the elementary dictionary Wiktionary gets it right: https://simple.wiktionary.org/wiki/where