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I have a sentence: "I lived in the southern city of Kazakhstan, which is surrounded by mountains."

In this sentence, it looks like that is Kazakhstan is surrounded by mountains. However, I wanted to say that is the city is surrounded by mountains.

How to avoid confusion?

Eddie Kal
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Ibrakhim
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    The simplest way would be to give the name of the city! – Kate Bunting Feb 17 '20 at 16:14
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    Does this answer your question? The use or omission of commas round relative clauses – FumbleFingers Feb 17 '20 at 16:27
  • In practice, your example context is "weird", because *the southern city of Kazakhstan* implies either that there's only one city in South Kazakhstan, OR that only one city in that region is surrounded by mountains (and I assume neither of those is true). Change it to *a* rather than *the [city], then it's just a matter of whether there's a comma/pause before which* or not. If the comma/pause *is* present, *which* non-restrictively refers to *Kazakhstan* being thus surrounded. If not it restrictively references *a particular Southern city* that's surrounded. – FumbleFingers Feb 17 '20 at 16:37

1 Answers1

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I lived in one of the (south's cities/ the southern cities), which is surrounded by mountains, of Kazakhstan.
it is called "Non-defining relative clauses"

https://www.ef.com/wwen/english-resources/english-grammar/non-defining-relative-clauses/

lee
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