Whom shall I say [ ___ is calling ]?
Commenting that "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing", Gene Buckley
offered me
the
following example from the
New
York Times of 1/15/07:
(1) The answer, shaped in the National
Security Council, is for the American military to make targets of
Iranians whom they believe are fueling attacks, a decision that Mr.
Bush made months ago that was disclosed only last week.
It's been a while since we looked at the
who/
whom thing here at Language Log
Plaza, and Buckley's example happens to be #25 on a list I've been
adding to over the years, so this might be a good time to dip once
again into the murky waters of
who
and
whom.
Here's a version of what I've said to my senior seminar at Stanford (on
innovation and spread in the lexicon and syntax) this quarter.
(That's "senior" in the sense of 'fourth-year undergraduate', not in
the sense of 'senior citizen'.)
1. We're interested here in interrogative and relative
WHO,
with non-possessive forms
who and
whom; and similarly with
WHOEVER,
with forms
whoever and
whomever (references to the former
should be taken as covering the second).
2. I'll call the two forms Form1 and Form
2, respectively
. The ordinary personal
pronouns have two corresponding (and roughly comparable) forms:
I/me, she/her, he/him,
we/us,
they/them. (For
YOU
and
IT, Form1 and Form2 are identical.)
3. The languages of the world have several strategies for
constituent interrogative clauses and for relative clauses (sometimes
more than one strategy in the same language). Two really common
ones involve special interrogative and relative pro-elements, either
(a) "extracted" from the usual locations of their phrase types (in
English, they appear at the beginning of their clauses, and nothing
appears in the usual location; sometimes the missing constituent is
referred to as a "gap"), or (b) left "in situ", in their usual
locations.
English uses extraction almost entirely (extracted material is in bold
face; the position of the gap is indicated by an underline; and square
brackets set off embedded clauses):
main question:
What did you see ___?
embedded question:
object of V: I wonder [ what they saw ___ ].
object of P: I wondered about [ what
they saw ___ ].
subject in pseudocleft: [ What
they saw ___ ] was a rhinoceros.
ordinary (headed) restrictive relative:
WH relative: The
rhinoceros [ which they saw
___ ] was angry.
(gap without extraction: that
relative: The rhinoceros [ that they saw ___ ] was angry.)
(gap without extraction: zero relative: The rhinoceros [ they saw ___ ]
was angry.)
non-restrictive relative: The rhinoceros, [
which they'd just noticed ___ ],
charged them.
"free relative" (headless):
object of V: I noticed [ what(ever) she had ___ in her hand ].
object of P: I looked at [ what(ever)
she had ___ in her hand ].
subject: [ What(ever) she had
___ in her hand ] sparkled.
But English also has a few special types of in-situ interrogative
clauses, notably in "reclamatory" and "incredulity" questions, where
you're asking about the words someone just used (because you didn't
quite hear them) or the substance of what they just said (because you
can't believe it):
You saw WHAT?!
4. For interrogative and relative
WHO, there is a
special relationship between Form2 and the syntactic function of object
(the object of a "governor", V or P); for most speakers, Form2 rarely,
or never, occurs as the (complete) subject of a finite clause. On
the other hand, for the ordinary personal pronouns, there is a special
relationship between Form1 and the syntactic function of subject (of a
finite clause); for most speakers, Form 1 rarely, or never, occurs as
the (complete) object of V or P.
This asymmetry shows up in another place. For
WHO,
Form1 is the all-purpose form, used when the conditions for Form2 are
not satisfied. So if someone says
I saw someone interesting yesterday.
you can ask
Who?
but even if you regularly say
Whom did you see?
you can't respond to the other person's assertion with
*Whom?
But for the ordinary personal pronouns, it goes the other way; you get
Form2 all over the place. So, for instance, if someone asks
Who did it, Brad or Janet?
you can reply with
Him.
but not with
*He.
even though you'd never say
*Him did it.
(There are many more intriguing facts like this.)
This is just a fact of life. Though they are to some degree
parallel,
WHO and the ordinary personal pronouns differ
in the way Form1 and Form2 are distributed.
5. Languages that use extraction in interrogatives and relatives
can differ in the details. In particular, they can carry over
case-marking from the gap to the extracted position -- the
WH
pronoun "inherits" the case appropriate to the gap -- or, since
questioned and relativized constituents bear a kind of focus, the
WH
pronouns can bear a case appropriate to this focussing -- either a
special case, or a defaulting to an all-purpose case.
English has (had) both systems. Pure inheritance produces the
Prescriptive System:
extracted subj: Form1
Who
did you say [ ___ stole the tarts ]?
A extracted obj of V: Form2
Whom
did you say [ they saw ___ ]?
B extracted obj of P, P stranded: Form2
Whom
did you say [ they went to ___ ]?
C extracted obj of P, P fronted with obj: of course, Form2
To whom
did you say [ they went ___ ]?
And defaulting to the all-purpose Form1 produces the Standard System:
extracted subj: Form1
Who
did you say [ ___ stole the tarts ]?
A extracted obj of V: Form1
Who
did you say [ they saw ___ ]?
B extracted obj of P, P stranded: Form1
Who
did you say [ they went to ___ ]?
C extracted obj of P, P fronted with obj: Form2 (it's the whole PP that
gets focus)
To whom
did you say [ they went ___ ]?
6. Assuming that the Prescriptive System was predominant for some
time, what would move people to innovate the (now) Standard System?
Speculative answer: it has to do with the much greater frequency of
main-clause subject questions (and relatives), versus all other
types. That would lead people to see Form1 as the one appropriate
for questions and relatives and so to (mistakenly) extend Form1 to
cases A and B (but not C).
7. Two consequences:
First, once the Standard System had spread some, the Prescriptive
System would increasingly be seen by many speakers as old-fashioned,
formal, even pretentious -- and on the positive side, as serious and
emphatic.
Second, in the Standard System,
whom
now occurs with any frequency only with fronted Ps -- a construction
that is itself associated with a high level of formality.
Put these two together and you get
whom
itself seen as old-fashioned, very formal, serious, and emphatic.
And so available for situations in which you want those connotations.
(Note again the contrast between
WHO and the ordinary
personal pronouns. For the ordinary personal pronouns, Form1 has,
for many speakers, come to be seen as formal, serious, and emphatic --
a development that leads some of these speakers to prefer "between you
and I" and the like in serious contexts.)
When you add in prescriptive injunctions against
who in cases A and B
(which began in the 18th century), which instructed writers and
speakers to replace (some occurrences of)
who by
whom, the way was open for
hypercorrection, which would produce
whom
in contexts not available for it in the Prescriptive System.
And so it has come to be. See Mark Liberman's Language Log
piece
on
(2) [ Whomever controls language ]
controls politics.
Mark refers there to a tongue-in-cheek piece by James Thurber on
whom, in which Thurber recommends:
"'Whom' should be used in the nominative case [i.e., for a subject --
AMZ] only when a note of dignity or austerity is desired."
Earlier, and more stunningly, Geoff Pullum
displayed
a photo of an American flag with this protestors' legend printed on
it:
(3) Cheats Murderers Rapists Thiefs
Terrorists [ Whom Captured Killed Enslaved Millions Of Africans ] [
Whom Killed More Natives Than Nazis Did Jews ] ...
Meanwhile, in e-mail from John Singler, 11/1/05, this item from a
Brooklyn neighborhood website (punctuation as in the original; I
forbear to indicate embedded clauses):
(4) Can anyone help me with information
about Lillian Krum whom may have married a "Cunningham" ,whom had a son
named Albert James Cunningham that married a Lillian Smith ,with whom
they had 4 children and moved to Florida . . .
Finally, one I collected myself:
(5) Key theorists, [ whom are almost
all white men ], control...
(Stanford Humanities Center fellow, in lunchtime conversation,
10/31/05 -- possibly reaching for more formality and seriousness, in
conversation with Lani Guinier).
8. These involve straightforward subjects with no obvious factors
favoring
whom. From
them we shade into some cases involving predicatives, a case not in the
lists above:
(6) Thank you so much [
whomever you are ___ ].
(letter to
Palo Alto Daily
News, 9/17/03, p. 10, thanking a good samaritan)
(7) Who I am today is [
whom
I've always wanted to be ___ ].
(cited by Wilson Gray on ADS-L, 6/8/06)
(8) I REALLY DON'T CARE [
WHOM YOU
CLAIM [ YOUR ANCESTOR WAS ___ ] ].
(cartoon cited by Geoff Pullum
here)
For predicatives, the Prescriptive System insists on Form1 for ordinary
personal pronouns ("It was I"), on analogy with the system of Latin,
while the Standard System is very strongly in favor of Form2 ("It was
me"), as the default form, and that might influence the choice of forms
for
WHO.
9. Now we come to two cases where the appearance of
whom for a subject has some
structural motivation. People have been noticing examples like
these for a hundred years at least (there is some discussion in
MWDEU of these precedents), and
it's fairly easy to find new ones.
There are two main cases.
9.1. In the first, we have an object clause (usually the object
of a P) with
WHO as its subject. The pronoun then
immediately follows the governor, and could easily be mistaken for its
object (even though it's the whole clause that's the object). In
fact, I believe there are languages in which a
WH
pronoun in this position regularly (or optionally) has its case
determined by the governor.
I'll call this case "in-situ subject of an object clause (ISOC)".
Examples:
(9) This is not a picture of a
political tide running in one direction. It is a picture of voters
venting their frustration on [ whomever [sic] happens to be in power ].
(Wall Street Journal
quoting USA Today, reported
by Ron Hardin in sci.lang, 11/6/03; that's the WSJ's "[sic]", by the way)
(10) ... and works to ascertain God's
leading as to [ whom should fill certain positions within our
congregation ], the full congregation radifies these appointments in ...
(
here,
cited in eggcorn database, 8/29/05, for "radify")
(11) This month's social has an Academy
Awards theme and two prizes will be given away. One prize will be
awarded to [ whomever successfully predicts the most winners for this
year ].
(e-mail to the QUEST (Queer University Employees at Stanford)
mailing list, 2/22/06)
(12) ATHENS, Ga. - Authorities are
searching for [ whomever posted a long list and description of supposed
sexual encounters between dozens of high school students on the online
networking site MySpace.com ].
(AP story reported by Ron Hardin on sci.lang, 10/2/06; the Washington Post version had whoever)
9.2. The second case is a bit subtler. Again there's an
object clause, but this time its subject has been extracted and now
appears at the front of a higher clause. Still, the gap of
extraction immediately follows the governor (most often, a V), so it's
in a position where some languages (I believe) allow the governor to
determine the case on this element; if this case is inherited by the
extracted element,
whom would
be predicted.
I'll call this case "extracted subject of an object clause
(ESOC)". Examples, beginning with the Buckley example, repeated
here:
Restrictive relative:
(1) The answer, shaped in the National Security Council, is for the
American military to make targets of Iranians [
whom they believe [ ___ are fueling
attacks ] ], a decision that Mr. Bush made months ago that was
disclosed only last week.
(from the
New York Times
of 1/15/07,
here)
Main question:
(13) [Robert Coren:] Well, I think what works best for
Steph is what works best, but, much as I'd dearly love to have Sim
there, I think cons work best in pleasant outdoor weather.
[Sim Aberson, a
meteorologist:] And whom do
you think [ ___ would be responsible for the POW ]? I hereby
declare that if I can't go, only UOW will occur.
(exchange on soc.motss, 1/18/05)
Non-restrictive relative (twice):
(14) Now there's antiwar Connecticut Senate candidate Ned Lamont, [
whom Moulitsas predicts [ ___ will
defeat Joe Lieberman in the party primary ] ]. He'll lose. And there's
Montana's senatorial candidate Jon Tester, [
whom Moulitsas predicts [ ___ will
beat incumbent Senator Conrad Burns in November ] ].
(Ben Shapiro column, reported by Ron Hardin on sci.lang,
6/14/06; see
here)
Restrictive relative:
(15) Bobby Hodges, a former Texas Air National Guard general [
whom "60 Minutes" claimed [___
had authenticated the memos ] ], says that when he was read them over
the phone he assumed they were handwritten and wasn't told that CBS
didn't have the originals.
(
Wall Street Journal,
reported by Paul Kriha in sci.lang, 9/13/06; see
here)
Non-restrictive relative:
(16) The 77-year-old Chomsky, [
whom
Chavez mistakenly thought [ ___ was dead ] ], is famous as a linguist
and as an opponent of U.S. foreign policy.
("Chomsky still best seller",
Mercury
News "Celebrities" section, from Chris Waigl in e-mail 9/27/06;
see
here)
(
MWDEU has similar examples
from Shakespeare -- note, from well before the age of the prescriptive
grammarians.)
10. Still more subtle (and much less frequent) examples involve
subjects that are understood as denoting affected participants in some
event -- that is, subjects that have some of the semantics of
objects. I have one case with the verb
GET taking
recipient subjects, and one with the subject in a passive:
(17) ... Hillary, or [ whomever gets
the nomination ], gets a shot.
(John Meacham, senior editor of Newsweek, on the Imus radio show,
reported by Ron Hardin in sci.lang on 6/13/03)
(18) The employee, [ whom has been
fired ], did not have the authority to take the equipment or the data
home.
(News editor on the Imus show, reported by Ron Hardin on
sci.lang, 7/1/06)
11. Finally, combinations of these factors.
First, an affected subject (subject in a passive) in combination with
ESOC:
(19) Currently I am reading Barry
Strauss's
The Trojan War.
Strauss is the type of classicist [
whom
in
Who Killed Homer? we once
thought [ ___ were desperately needed for a dying profession ] ].
(Victor Davis Hanson, quoted by Ron Hardin in sci.lang, 12/3/06;
see
here.
The wonky number agreement is a bonus.)
Then, a predicative counterpart to ISOC -- a predicative fronted in an
embedded clause, where it immediately follows a governor (in this case,
P):
(20) ... the courage to be open about [
whom I was ___ ].
(James McGreevey, cited by Mark Liberman
here)
12. Some lessons.
12.1. People struggle to discern system and meaning, on very
imperfect evidence. Yes, they thrash about and make mistakes, but
mostly what we see is an attempt to find a system in what they're
confronted with. People come up with systems that are possible as
languages -- they are attested in other languages -- but are not, in
fact, necessarily the predominant systems of other speakers around them.
Then those systems can spread.
12.2. The "same" grammatical category in different word classes
might have quite different principles of distribution.
12.3. "Nominative" and "accusative" (or "subject case" and "object
case") aren't bad names, but the labels aren't definitions, and they
aren't descriptions. We choose the labels because of the ways the
forms are frequently used, not the other way around. That's why I
insisted on making the case names arbitrary and strange -- "Form1" and
"Form2" -- so that you wouldn't import expectations about what
"nominative" and "accusative" forms
SHOULD do.
We inventory the distinct forms and list the ways they're used.
Then we pick names. But the names are just expository icing, not
anything of significance in the description.
zwicky at-sign csli period stanford period edu
Posted by Arnold Zwicky at January 23, 2007 10:31 AM