In the family of relative pronouns, whose can be described as a younger brother of ‘who’, which is normally used for humans. On the other hand, ‘which’ collocates with non-humans. As a result, when we say ‘The man who came yesterday is from Gabon’, we would say, ‘The toothpick which (or that) was imported from China is colourful.’
Similarly, the correct thing is to say, ‘The man whose computer was stolen has reported the matter to the police.’ But is it wrong to say, ‘The tree whose branches were cut was planted by a foreigner’? No! It is also correct!
As a matter of fact, the alternative that many of us who find such an expression awkward go for is wrong. You know, such fellows say, ‘The tree which branches were cut …’ The reason is that they find using ‘whose’ odd with a tree and other non-living things which, according to the Biology teacher, can neither breathe nor eat.
To first establish why ‘The tree which branches were cut …’ is wrong, we have to consider the uses or capacity of ‘which’.
For instance, it can be used in questions with a limited set of answers. It can also be used to add extra information to a previous clause. It, however, lacks the power to show possession or ownership, especially in the given context.
Yes, these statements are pretty good:
The other car, which was donated by the monarch, is okay.
Which colour do you prefer: red or blue?
But ‘which’ is not acceptable here:
The other car, which driver was looking for you, was donated by a monarch.
The box, which red colour is being criticised, is on the chair.
For the pronoun to be relevant in the situation, the construction has to become ‘of which’:
The tree, the branches of which were caught by the man, was planted by a foreigner.
The speech, the title of which is ‘The other side of democracy’, is filled with errors.
Yet, perhaps because a lot of people do not want to go the seemingly winding way, and because they believe that ‘whose’ is odd with non-humans, they choose the unacceptable ‘which branches’ model. Experts say the genesis of the dilemma is that while ‘who’ has the ‘whose’ counterpart, English language provides no such an offshoot for ‘which’. The consolation is, however, that you can either embrace ‘of which …’ or use ‘whose’ in showing possession for all nouns:
The teacher, whose son is in the other class, is very caring. (Correct)
The classroom, the captain of which has just stepped out, is very neat. (Correct)
The classroom, whose captain has just stepped out, is very neat. (Correct)
The classroom, which captain has just stepped out, is very neat. (Wrong)
Merriam-Webster Dictionary has a revealing note on the status of ‘whose’ and ‘which’ in this regard:
“Whose is the possessive version of the relative pronoun who. Which and that, the relative pronouns for animals and objects, do not have an equivalent; so, “whose” can be used here as well, such as in “the movie, whose name I can’t remember.” Whose is appropriate for inanimate objects in all cases except the interrogative case, where “whose” is in the beginning of a sentence. In this case “whose” must refer to a living being.
“… It wasn’t until the 18th-century that the sticklers of grammar took notice of this centuries-long peccadillo, emphatically declaring whose to be the possessive only of the relative pronoun ‘who’ while whispering their acknowledgment that English lacks an equivalent possessive for which and that. Their recommendation has been to use the construction, ‘of which’, for inanimate objects. This might work in some cases, but for the most part, it ends up sounding clumsy or stilted:
He was watching the movie whose title I couldn’t remember earlier.
The car, the windshield of which is cracked, is his.”
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