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"He could hear the background noise of the tractor was very close to him."

Is it correct to not use 'which' in the above sentence?

Hey Varsii

Where would you like to insert " which"? Re text the sentence and insert it so we can help you .

Hey Charmaine

I was asking if it was okay to remove 'which' from

"He could hear the background noise of the tractor, which was very close to him."

It was written as this.

"He could hear the background noise of the tractor was very close to him."

I would like to know if the above sentence is grammatically wrong or if it is a style of writing. Thank you.

Varsii wrote: ↑10 Jun 2024, 13:31 Hey Charmaine

I was asking if it was okay to remove 'which' from

"He could hear the background noise of the tractor, which was very close to him."

It was written as this.

"He could hear the background noise of the tractor was very close to him."

I would like to know if the above sentence is grammatically wrong or if it is a style of writing. Thank you.

Hey . Thank you so much for assisting , I get it now.
By removing " which" the sentence becomes incorrect automatically. The " which" in this case is used in this sentence to explain more about the noun "background noise of the tractor".
So do not remove the which to keep the sentence grammatically correct. 🖒

You can also insert "that" without a comma. That would be correct also.

When I first read the sentence, it sounded a bit off. Adding "which" should make the sentence grammatically correct.
Here:
"He could hear the background noise of the tractor, which was very close to him."

I agree with Igwe. The use of "which" helps the sentence to flow better.

The mentioned error turned out as style of writing from the author and was distracting throughout the book. All we all feel, the sentence had disturbance in the flow but was regarded as correct anyway. At the expense of readers' inconvenience some writers stick to their ways strongly and as a reader I chose to respect that if not appreciate it. So I accepted it as it is and let go of the issue. Apologies for not updating earlier. And I am greatful for all of your time replying to this .

This is cool! I enjoyed thinking about why this sentence is wrong.

I think this is a grammar error that is sufficiently unusual for native speakers that it's not regularly encountered in grammar instruction. The problem is that "the background noise of the tractor" is acting as both the direct object of the first half of the sentence and the subject of the second half of the sentence. But English doesn't do this. Consider two well-formed sentences: he hit the ball; the ball went out of the park. Both of these are correct. But if you try to make "the ball" both object and subject in one sentence, it's not standard English: "he hit the ball went out of the park." This is the same pattern as your example sentence, and I'm convinced it's wrong.

Either "he hit the ball, which went out of the park," or better "he hit the ball out of the park," which is a standard direct object followed by indirect object construction, would be correct.

Ethan Rogers 1 wrote: ↑06 Nov 2024, 17:27 This is cool! I enjoyed thinking about why this sentence is wrong.

I think this is a grammar error that is sufficiently unusual for native speakers that it's not regularly encountered in grammar instruction. The problem is that "the background noise of the tractor" is acting as both the direct object of the first half of the sentence and the subject of the second half of the sentence. But English doesn't do this.

I spent a whole lot of time researching why the mentioned sentence is right. And ended up with the conclusion that it is an example where you can omit the 'relative pronoun' in the sentence and it is a valid usage. We can rewrite the mentioned sentence as,

"He could hear that the background noise of the tractor was very close to him."

Relating to your explanation, the first part of the sentence ends with the word hear.
And the pronoun 'that' can disappear or be hidden if it is 'complementary of the verb' in a declarative clause. Not after all verbs and only with a few like told, thought, hear, wish etc. For example consider, "I could hear that you were moving around upstairs." It is correct to write it as "I could hear you were moving around upstairs." This is what convinced me that the sentence was right. Sitting through a grammar lesson was hard, but I enjoyed researching it too. I could be wrong though. Feel free to correct me if I am.

Thank you for sharing your results. Could you share more context around the quote? I think whether it's correct or not may depend on the intended meaning of the sentence.

I think "that" is actually acting as a conjunction introducing a direct object rather than as a pronoun. The result of my research into whether "that" can be omitted as a conjunction is basically: sometimes that can be omitted, and sometimes it cannot be omitted. There is no general rule to decide whether it can be omitted or not. We just have to follow the intuitions of native English speakers.

From the examples you give, if the main point of the sentence is that he realizes that the tractor is close to him, you've convinced me it's right. If the point of the sentence is that he hears the tractor (which is how I was reading it), then I think it's wrong. The difference can be illustrated by two unambiguous sentences: "He heard that the tractor was close." "He heard the tractor, which was close." The meaning is subtly different. In spoken English, I think the two sentences would also be stressed differently. The "that" can be correctly omitted from the first sentence without changing the meaning, but the "which" cannot be omitted from the second sentence correctly without changing the meaning. So, I would decide whether it's correct or incorrect by looking at the context to find out whether the point is that he hears the tractor or that he realizes it's close.

Ethan Rogers 1 wrote: ↑07 Nov 2024, 09:10 The "that" can be correctly omitted from the first sentence without changing the meaning, but the "which" cannot be omitted from the second sentence correctly without changing the meaning. So, I would decide whether it's correct or incorrect by looking at the context to find out whether the point is that he hears the tractor or that he realizes it's close.

Sorry, I lost the source. It was from a book I reviewed a while ago and got into a dispute in evaluating PRQ over the mentioned sentence.
If I remember it right, the context is that the protagonist makes a phone call to his father. When his father picks up, he hears the tractor running through the phone. He notices it and feels guilty because he got the tractor stuck in the ground while driving it the previous night when it rained. He both hears and realizes the closeness of the tractor to his father.
This was the case throughout the book. The author was omitting "that" wherever they could and got me distracted for a while. I am a non-native speaker. So I thought the author's preference was new to me. But from what you are saying, I guess the author must be a non-native too. Thank you for replying and hope this helps.

This was a fun question to figure out. I guess they could also just be less "literary" and not used to working with longer written sentences. Omitting "that" is probably much more common in informal and spoken English than in written "literary" English. There's probably also dialect variation.

I envy you your facility in writing a non-native language.