OF WHICH?

I received the following question from a student, which I'll respond to below:

 

I quoted the following sentences from Guardian, though, I could not understand what the expression "of which" means here

 

"There's the predictable slew of buzz-building reports overnight, the most unlikely of which comes from the usually infallible" and on other occasion " Apple will also add a few surprises, the most dramatic of which would be retinal display.

 

And this from comments " the only value of which is the capacity to store all my music"

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/pda/2011/mar/02/ipad2-apple-steve-jobs

 

MY RESPONSE: Good question.  Let's answer it in two stages:

 

Firstly, the purpose of WHICH in these examples is to join together two sentences. So:

 

I found an interesting article. I would like to ask you a question about the interesting article.

 

becomes

 

I found an interesting article WHICH I would like to ask you a question about.

 

So far so simple, but, here's the second stage of my answer.  What if one of the sentences we want to join has a preposition?

 

I saw a horrible clip on Youtube.  In the clip, an owl gets injured at a football match.

My grandfather had six brothers.  Five of my grandfather's brothers fought in the  Second World War.

 

become

 

I saw a horrible clip on Youtube in which an owl gets injured at a football match.

My grandfather had six brothers, five of whom fought in the  Second World War.

 

Note that the preposition is attached to WHICH in the relative clause.  When we attach a preposition to WHO, it becomes WHOM

 

So, in your examples:

 

"There's the predictable slew of buzz-building reports overnight, the most unlikely of which comes from the usually infallible" and on other occasion " Apple will also add a few surprises, the most dramatic of which would be retinal display.

 

= There's the predictable slew of buzz-building reports overnight. The most unlikely of the reports comes from the usually infallible…(I suspect that what comes next is the source of the report)

and: Apple will also add a few surprises. The most dramatic of the surprises would be retinal display.

 

Your second example tells me why you found it difficult to understand.  You have clipped out the important part of the sentence that WHICH refers to:

 

And this from comments " the only value of which is the capacity to store all my music"

 

I had a look by myself and found this:

 

I'd much prefer a 128GB iPhone. Then I could finally retire the iPod Classic, the only value of which is the capacity to store all my music.

= I could finally retire the iPod Classic.  The only value of the iPod Classic is the capacity to store all my music.

 

Does that make sense?