§ 40. The pronouns how much and how many are used as noun

pronouns and as adjective pronouns.

How much asks about the amount of something and is used of

or with only uncountable nouns.

e.g. How much did you find out?

How much money do you need?

How many asks about the number of persons and things and is

used of or with only countable nouns.

e.g. "There are several people sitting at the fireplace." "How many

can you count?"

How many people took part in the experiment?

How many invitations have been sent out?

§ 41. The interrogative pronouns who, what and which may be

made emphatic by adding ever. Ever here means something like

'on earth', 'in the world'. Depending on the situation, questions

introduced by the emphatic forms in -ever express different emotions,

such as surprise, anger, despair, indignation, etc. The use

of the form in -ever is distinctly colloquial.

e.g. Whoever (who ever) can be calling at this time of the night?

Whoever (who ever) heard of such a silly idea? Whatever

(what ever) were you thinking of to suggest such a

plan? He gets up at five o'clock every morning. What

ever for?Conjunctive Pronouns

§42. The pronouns who (whom), whose, what, which, how

much, how many and that are used to connect subordinate clauses

with the principal clause. Owing to their auxiliary function they

are called conjunctive pronouns. At the same time they all have

an independent syntactic function in the subordinate clause.

e.g. Do you know who has bought the house? (subject) He always said

exactly what he thought, (object) * I'm surprised to see how

much he had done in so short a

time, (object) I walked past a row of houses whose front doors

opened onto

the pavement, (attribute)

You'll never guess what present I want him to give me. (attribute)

I had to find out what he was. (predicative)

When conjunctive pronouns are used in the function of a

prepositional object, the preposition is generally placed at the end .

of the clause.

e.g. The man who(m) I spoke to is my neighbour.

You are the very person that I have been looking for.

Who it was done by is for us to find out.

Conjunctive pronouns may be used to introduce different

kinds of clauses, except adverbial clauses and appositive clauses,

which are introduced only by conjunctions.

e.g. What was done cannot be undone, (subject clause)

The question is which of them is going to be appointed president

of the firm, (predicative clause)

Life in the country isn't what it used to be, you know, (predicative

clause)

I don't know whose handwriting it is. (object clause) I'll

surprise you by what I'll do. (prepositional object clause) He

is one of the men whom I can trust, (attributive clause)

§ 43. It is noteworthy that not all the conjunctive pronouns can

be used with all kinds of clauses mentioned above. Thus, subject,

predicative and object clauses can be introduced by the conjunctivepronouns who (whom), whose, which and how much, how many.

The use of these conjunctive pronouns does not differ from that

of the corresponding interrogative pronouns (see §§ 36-40 above).

That is no longer a conjunctive pronoun when it introduces one of

these clauses, but a mere conjunction because it has no syntactic

function in the subordinate clause.

e.g. That he is going to resign is no secret.

My guess is that he is in love. I know

that he is no fool.