No, More Annoying Than That

You know what's even more annoying? When you pedantically correct someone's grammar but you're totally wrong, and then someone else points that out?

THE EVEN MORE ANNOYING THING. Kieran Healy says here:

The odd part, though, is that the people who call me, whoever they are....

See, the really annoying part is us folks who scream "whomever"! Whomever! Learn English! It's not a secret! Whomever!

And that sort of thing.

Read The Rest Scale: whatever.

I expect to lose 500 readers or friends to one here. Pretty much no one knows from "whom" or "who" ever. English; it's an old hobby.

The relative pronoun takes its NUMBER from the antecedent and its CASE from its role in the subordinate clause. So, because "people" is plural "whoever" is plural (as can be seen from the plural verb "are"). BUT, because "whoever" is the subject of the verb in the subordinate clause it is in the subjective (or nominative) case, NOT the objective (or accusative).

Compare:
The people who called me, whom I had met before...

A good rule of thumb is to replace the relative clause with an ordinary sentence containing the third person pronoun; if you would say he or they, use who (-ever). If you would say him or them, use whom. Now, you may think that "whoever" in the clause "whoever they are" is the predicate, and that "they" is the subject. So what? It still shouldn't be in the objective case. Thus: "it was she" not "it was her."

Comments

[Matt]

I agree with you on your "whomever" analysis, but "it was her" is perfectly legitimate in modern English. "Who did this?" "It was her". Sounds natural to 99% of native speakers, and native speakers (as a hyperconnected simultaneous mob-clan! tipping point etc!) make the rules.

[belle waring]

you're right, matt. I don't even say "it is I" if someone asks me who's there. so maybe that wasn't a good example. I've just thought about this a lot because when you have to translate from English into a language that has inflected case endings (as Latin, Greek, Russian etc. do) then you have to figure out what case the English word corresponds to.

[jdw]

"Us folks" is clearly just a clever troll, or else I'd comment.

[Doug M]

Thanks Belle -- I've often wondered about those pronouns that, sitting between two clauses, get pulled in both grammatical directions. Your answer sounds right.

Here's my own favorite English grammatical construction: "Those books that I don't know where I put them belong to John."

Back to your point, though: "Whoever I kill comes back to life" -- right or wrong?

[Fontana Labs]

Damn, that post was hot.

[ben wolfson]

Doug, I think that should be "whomever".

[LizardBreath]

Belle-

I'm sure you've read this Daniel Davies post: http://d-squareddigest.blogspot.com/ on why he was right about the war while so many other sensible people were wrong, but anyone who hasn't should. It's a perfect, clear summary of a couple of rules of thumb for evaluating arguments that would have kept you from making the reasonable errors you made.

[LizardBreath]

Goddam, that was supposed to be a comment to the Iraq post. Sorry -- I'll copy it over to the right place.

[belle waring]

Doug--I vote for "whomever". this is partly because the word immediately precedes the verb whose object it is ("kill"). But also, I think in this sentence "whomever" is the antecedent of a suppressed pronoun "he" which is the subject of the main verb "comes back to life." i.e., the "whomever" could logically be expanded to he, whom I kill [whoever he is], comes... etc." when I was a kid I really liked diagramming sentences.

[bryan]

whatever*.

*had to.

[Anthony]

Belle, you really should have done Linguistics, and then you could use terms like trace and theta role. Also you would be able to diagram sentences until you didn't enjoy it anymore.

[Thea_Fenchel]

The Language Log has had a good series of posts on Who/Whom... you might start here.

[Eva]

It is clearly "whomever I kill" (...).

However, as a native German speaker (and having taken Latin for six years in high school), I believe that there is *no* good way in the English language to state a universally applicable rule for this that is valid *and* usable by someone who only speaks English, OTHER THAN John's (fantastic) rule to convert the subordinate clause in question to a regular sentence with subject, predicate, object and replace "who(m)" with the applicable personal pronoun (e.g., "they", or "them", he or him, etc). If in the conversion you use the nominative (I, they) --> use "who" in the subordinate clause. If the conversion uses the dative/accusative (him, them) --> use whom in the subordinate clause.

John's first example - and the ensuing "I am she/her" debate - both happen to use a conjugation of "to be" as the predicate. "To be" is one of the few verbs that "require" (ask for) the nominative (first case, or "I", "they" form) in the associated object, and this is the reason why "I am she" is grammatically correct (though colloquially unfamiliar).

[Eva]

It is clearly "whomever I kill" (...).

However, as a native German speaker (and having taken Latin for six years in high school), I believe that there is *no* good way in the English language to state a universally applicable rule for this that is valid *and* usable by someone who only speaks English, OTHER THAN John's (fantastic) rule to convert the subordinate clause in question to a regular sentence with subject, predicate, object and replace "who(m)" with the applicable personal pronoun (e.g., "they", or "them", he or him, etc). If in the conversion you use the nominative (I, they) --> use "who" in the subordinate clause. If the conversion uses the dative/accusative (him, them) --> use whom in the subordinate clause.

John's first example - and the ensuing "I am she/her" debate - both happen to use a conjugation of "to be" as the predicate. "To be" is one of the few verbs that "require" (ask for) the nominative (first case, or "I", "they" form) in the associated object, and this is the reason why "I am she" is grammatically correct (though colloquially unfamiliar).