Most grammars define a relative pronoun as something like this:
A relative pronoun is used to link a so-called relative clause to the head of a noun phrase or, in some cases, to a whole clause.
Either a nominal or clausal element is, according to most definitions, the only possible antecedent for a relative pronoun.
This would suggest that when a copular clause with a predicate adjective is followed by a nonrestrictive which relative clause, the antecedent is the entire preceding clause. That indeed is usually the case:
Also, the pictures and maps are large and colorful, which makes them attractive and exciting, and helps the children remember historical events connected with the illustrations. — The Volta Review, 65-67 (1963), 176.
That the pictures are large and colorful, i.e., a state, is what makes them attractive, etc. The antecedent of which is thus the entire independent clause.
This would also seem the case when the causative verb is in the main clause instead of the relative:
Its elegant trees, flowers and open green spaces are everywhere prevelant and its magnificent marble buildings are decided civic assets and add to its physical beauty, and make it colorful, which is in marked contrast to the drabness of most large cities. — Transactions of the American Society for Steel Treating, 1927.
The “drabness of most large cities” is a state, which is explicitly contrasted to a city having been made colorful, i.e., the resultant state, rather than the adjective alone: the causative verb must be included in the antecedent, and — in for a penny, in for a pound — the subject as well.
If, however, the adjective as descriptor is topical rather than the state it describes, then the antecedent is the predicate adjective itself, and not the entire clause.
This is especially obvious because the copula is repeated in the relative clause rather than having a different verb make its own argument, as in the two “colorful” examples above. In this case, the most economical substitute for which is the adjective alone, not the subject's being in a state so described.
He was no intellectual, God knows, but he was highly intelligent—which a whole lot of 'intellectuals' aren't, you know—and he knew his fellow man from a rough and crowded life. — Adlai Stevenson about the late Frank Knox, Sec'y of the Navy during WWII. The Progressive (magazine) 1960.
Be forewarned, it is a very big chair and is really meant for those who are quite tall, which I am not, at only 5 feet. — Customer review for an office chair, Walmart website.
But asking any more questions would make her seem nosy—which she was, of course. She'd been nosy all her life. — Vicki Lewis Thompson, A Last Chance Christmas, 2014, 26.
He thought he was good enough, which he wasn't, and he did himself no favours by harping on about it. — Mark Mills, The Long Shadow, 2013.
31.03.2009 It was my first out of college job and I will always appreciate how cool she was, which she didn't have to be to a Jr. Project Manager… Lost Angeles blog.
Still he lay there, sprawled out, pretending he was half-drowned, which he wasn't at all. He hadn't been in the water long enough to be even a quarter-drowned, or an eighth-drowned, for that matter. — Catherine Cate Coblentz, The Blue Cat of Castle Town, 1949.
This construction takes the form of a disjunct inserting a writer’s opinion affirming or negating the quality described by the adjective, not a state, resultant or otherwise.
An adjectival antecedent is equally possible with dependent infinitives of linking verbs:
He continued to tell her there's no need to get angry — which she wasn't AT ALL even though I thought she had every right to be. — Yelp review, IRS Office, San Marcos CA.
27.03.2013 · I warned her to be careful, which she was. — My Own Little Planet [blog].
When they entered, the king bade these chiefs be silent, which they were instantaneously. — Robert Pickering Ashe, Two Kings of Uganda, London, 1890, 75.
In the last two examples, the relative clause does not affirm or negate, but gives a response to a warning or command: I warned her [beforehand] to be careful, and she was; the king said “Be silent!” and they were. The which-clause here is not disjunctive, but simply continues the narrative.
I have not readily found any source which discusses at any length an adjective/adjective phrase as the antecedent of relative which, even though such a construction is syntactically distinct enough from those taking nominal or clausal antecedents that you'd think someone might have mentioned it.
This may be changing. An article posted online by two scholars from Essex University, “Non-nominal Which-Relatives,” suggests
The use of which with a non-nominal antecedent is quite restricted. Examples where the associated gap is a VP, PP or AP complement of a lexical verb are bad, as are examples where the gap is an adjunct.
To illustrate the “bad,” the authors include the following example:
*Kim seems intelligent, which Lee doesn’t seem.
I’m not sure what supplementing the verb in the relative with to be does to the discussion here or in the article, but on the following page, citing Ross and Pullum/Huddleston, the authors offer the following examples — without asterisks — to illustrate which-relatives that strand the auxiliary verb. This section of the article essentially reprises the same arguments one of the authors made — with the same examples — at a 2010 conference in Paris:
a. Kim will sing, which Lee won’t.
b. Kim has sung, which Lee hasn’t.
c. Kim is singing, which Lee isn’t.
d. Kim is clever, which Lee isn’t.
e. Kim is in Spain, which Lee isn’t.
Now it seems to have escaped the authors’ attention that in d and e, is is decidedly not an auxiliary. That, however, does not detract from the conclusion that the antecedents of which are clever (d) and in Spain (e) the latter a locative complement, just as the antecedents in the other examples are also non-nominal.
As others interact with this article, one can assume that further observations about this construction will be made.
