Briefly put, I think 'which' is acting both like a relative pronoun jAND
a demonstrative pronoun in most of the  examples we've discussed.  It's
one of many causes where an either/or approach to grammar is misleading.
 I'm not saying that all instances of 'which' used in such ways are "ok"
in terms of formal English, but I can certainly see that 'which' is
evolving, for better or worse.

Let me toss out a related example that's relatively (pardon the pun)
common--the use of "in which case" to begin a sentence.  Again, it's a
phrase I see in competent writing.  Here's an example I made up and is
probably not  pretty:

"The president might visit the Florida panhandle.  In which case we
will dismiss class so that we can meet him."

Here, 'which' seems to behave as a demonstrative adjective--rather than
a demonstrative pronoun.  Or again it could just be understandably
dismissed as a fragment containing a relative pronoun acting as an
adjective, even though 'which' as a 'relative adjective' is not very
common.

Larry

-------------------------------
Larry Beason
Director of Composition
Dept. of English, Univ. of South Alabama
Mobile, AL 36688
251-460-7861
-------------------------------

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