IDIOMs - AIM

[anusuthakaran]

The SC GUIDE mentions the following idiom as SUSPECT :

We adopted new policies, THE AIM OF WHICH was TO REDUCE theft.

here, what does WHICH refer to ?
Is it the 'adoption of new policies'. I recall reading in the PRONOUNS chapter that WHICH cannot be used to refer ideas in an earlier clause.

or

Is it the policies ? In that case WERE should be used instead of WAS.

Please clarify.
Anu.

[esledge]

Hi Anu,

Logically, I think the which is trying to refer to the adoption of new policies, but that's grammatically tricky since the sentence uses adopted, the verb, rather than the adoption, the action noun version of that verb. Which can only modify nouns.

Since which could modify new policies, it probably skates by as just "Suspect" instead of entirely "Wrong."

In any case, the verb should be was. The subject after the comma is the singular the aim. Note that which is the object of the preposition of, so of which is just a modifier of the aim.

Examples:
The aim of our team was to win.
The aim of the students was to learn. (The fact that we have plural students doesn't change the singular subject-verb pair.)