Fill in the blank with a suitable pronoun:
We left the exhibition early. I wonder _______ painting won the first place [Intermediate]
Relative pronouns are used to refer to nouns mentioned previously. They could be people, places, things, animals, or ideas. They are also used to join two sentences. ‘Who’, ‘whose’, ‘whom’ and ‘where’ are used as relative pronouns. We use ‘whose’ to highlight to whom something/someone belongs to. Since the given sentence focuses on the relationship between the painting and the person who painted it, ‘whose’ is the apt answer. It denotes belonging. Therefore option B is correct.‘On the other hand, we use 'who’ and ‘whom’ to speak about people, especially someone who has been referred to previously. ‘Who’ is used in the place of the subject of the sentence, like in “The students who work hard will pass”. While ‘whom’ is used in the place of the object of the sentence, like in “She is the girl whom I mentioned earlier”. Since the sentence doesn’t focus on the person, both ‘who’ and ‘whom’ are unsuitable. Thus options A and C are incorrect. ‘Where’ cannot be used in the sentence because it is used to state the place a person is at or has left, which is not the case here. For example, “This is the place where we met last week”. Thus option D is incorrect.