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I have seen phrases like

'What judge?'

and

'What prisoners?'

But I feel that 'which' is a more appropriate pronoun for living things.Why not 'which' has been used there?

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1 Answers1

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Which is ordinarily used when asking for the identity of a specific member or members of a known group:

A: The government said they would release three prisoners.
B: Which prisoners? There are over a hundred of them.

What is ordinarily used when asking for the identity of somebody previously unknown.

A: The government said they would release three of the prisoners.
B: What prisoners? There should be no prisoners; they said last fall they had released them all.

StoneyB on hiatus
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    The same principle applies to inanimate/abstract concepts like What height are you? - a valid response being whatever height, in whatever units, the respondent feels accurately reflects his height, whereas Which height are you? would presuppose a context where a limited number of height ranges are contextually known to both parties (valid response being the most appropriate predefined category). – FumbleFingers Jul 05 '16 at 13:19
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    For completeness, it might be good to also mention "who", which is the standard English interrogative pronoun for people, but cannot act as a determiner; that is, while you can say "Who?" or "What prisoners?", in normal English you cannot say *"Who prisoners?", but must instead use "what" in that case. – Ilmari Karonen Jul 05 '16 at 20:37