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Does anybody have a name for this construction? To me it is non-grammatical.

I hiked early this morning with my sister which I am not a morning person!

I hear this kind of thing quite a bit. It occurred to me that which splice might be a reasonable name; Google didn't back me up on that though.

The fundamental problem seems to be that which's antecedent really has no grammatical connection to the latter half of the sentence while the speaker is clearly implying a link. (The linkage is destroyed by giving that secondary clause it's own new subject?)

Does this just amount to not recognizing that which is a pronoun and so trying to use it as a conjunction?

If anybody has insight on terminology or the root of the confusion I'd appreciate it.

Edit

Which seems to be functioning as an abbreviated stand-in for something more like which is notable because.

My perception is that it feels like a relative clause to the writer/speaker. The distance from the original subject I forces it to be restated for clarification. Yet even if we accept that as valid there's another concern over using which rather than who.

I hiked early this morning with my sister who I am not a morning person! (X)

Would anybody argue in favor of that one?

Edit 2

This usage isn't limited to exclamation sentences yet I see a noteworthy twist in this example. A slightly awkward rephrasing alters the impact of the statement:

I, not a morning person, hiked early this morning with my sister!

The morning person part is intensified by coming at the end and attaches semantically to the exclamatory mark. Had the spliced thoughts been separated by a full stop the meaning is probably nearly identical to what the writer wanted to convey and better reflected by the punctuation.

Edit 3

This is not an issue of ESL or dialect. Seeing it in print on Facebook is what prompted me to go ahead and post the question. I've heard it spoken many times by people I know well. This has nothing to do with auto-correction. I've thought about this many times before and investigated it myself.

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    "Though" would work. – Hot Licks Sep 17 '19 at 0:45
  • @HotLicks I agree that it would. That's not what people say though. – shawnt00 Sep 17 '19 at 0:48
  • People don't say "which" in that context. – Hot Licks Sep 17 '19 at 0:51
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    I doubt that you are hearing it from native English speakers. – Hot Licks Sep 17 '19 at 1:19
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    @shawnt00 are you sure it's not dialect? It is not standard where I come from. Where are the people from that use this? What is their demographic? Who do they associate themselves with? – marcellothearcane Sep 17 '19 at 6:32
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I've certainly heard it in British NS use and it puzzles me. The use of a relative pronoun implies a degree of linguistic sophistication which is contradicted by the non-standard usage. Is it used as a sign of identity - dialect perhaps? Whatever; it does exist and it is "incorrect".

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Let's parse the sentence as "(I hiked early this morning with my sister) (which) (I am not a morning person)!"

The first part is an activity and the last explains its significance.

Looking at it this way, it would be fair to consider the middle part to be intended as a conjunction. Perhaps when would have worked better, or if you wanted to preserve more of the original, whereas. Using although would flow even better, though it takes some of the wind out of the speaker's attempt to sound impressive.

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  • Your analysis matches up with mine. Do you consider that to be grammatical? I'm not the down vote by the way. – shawnt00 Sep 18 '19 at 22:53
  • @shawnt00 Thanks. I considered der the original to be ungrammatical. – Lawrence Sep 19 '19 at 13:40

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