A Mistake that Bears Repeating

That is, I should repeat mentioning it so you won’t do it! I’m pretty sure nobody memorizes my little grammar lessons, and besides, repetition is the mother of learning, right?

Anyway, in English, we use the objective case for words that are objects of prepositions and direct objects. That means me instead of I, them instead of they. Other languages, that have more cases, can use any of several other cases with prepositions. We say their prepositions take the accusative, or the dative, or the genitive. But nobody uses the nominative with prepositions. Nominative is reserved for the subjects of sentences.

English speakers tend to get confused when their prepositions and  verbs have a compound object. I think this error descends from a common correction in sixth grade English class that I won’t get into right now. So we say, the prize goes to Bill and Bob, or Tom whipped Bill and Bob, which are correct. (Nouns in English don’t show case except for the possessive.) But when we use pronouns (which do show case), lots of folks revert to the nominative, and they say it the way the third cell in this comic says it. I’m pretty sure Scott Meyer knows the correct way to use a compound direct object, but he drew his character as someone who doesn’t. Thank you, Scott, for giving me a good example of what not to say!

I don’t think it’s correct for a kid to whip his parents, but if Dad is describing it, he should say, “his mother and me.”

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Most of the time when you run into a lesson about who and whom, it’s about using whom when you want to use who. I’ve even posted about it. (Search the site for “whom” for a few other examples.) Usually these articles compare the subject (who) with the direct object or object of a preposition (whom).

There’s another time to use “who,” but first a little background. In Indo-European and Semitic languages at least, the verb “to be” and its various forms and equivalents (seem, appear)  are somewhat special. “To be” etc. is equivalent to an equals sign , and the name for this kind of verb is a copulative. Your grade school teacher probably called them linking verbs. Copulatives couple things together. That means that a noun at the end of a sentence that uses a copulative isn’t a direct object. It’s a predicate nominative.

For example:

Tom is a dentist. Tom and Dave are dentists. They are good dentists, and they are also my cousins.

If we use and equals sign in place of the verb, the meaning is the same:

Tom = dentist; Tom and Dave = dentists.

Predicate nominatives have the same case as the subject, even though they might be where you expect a direct object. It’s the verb’s fault. Copulatives take the nominative, we say. (“We” being linguists, grammarians, and now you, I hope.) So this guy approaches the pearly gates, and St. Peter asks who it is. “It is I,” says the man. Peter mutters to himself, “Ah, an English teacher.”

So be alert! Use “who” with linking verbs. Here’s an example of a professional writer (and his editor, apparently) in a Live Science article who wasn’t paying attention:

There’s no telling whom the original owner of the teeth and finger was, but the cave where they were discovered was both a hermitage, or dwelling place, and the site of a grisly medieval massacre. [8 Disturbing Archaeological Discoveries]

That “whom” really grates. It’s not only at the beginning, where you expect nominatives, but it’s with a linking verb, which takes the nominative.

So there you have it. Two times to use who, not whom. As subjects and with linking verbs.

I don’t know why I’m being so hard on comics lately. Usually comic artists are pretty careful about their use of language, and I have a lot of respect for them, what with having to not only draw, but also write, two very different skills, neurologically speaking. This one is from a comic I don’t read regularly. I saw a link to it on a website that I do read, and this was on the first page. I got locked onto the solecism and haven’t read anything else. It looks like it might be a nice adventure tale for those of you who like that sort of comic, PG rated, I suppose. The comic is called Valkyrie, by By Fernando Heinz Furukawa and I don’t know what the comic is about. Shame on me for generalizing after looking at only one page, but judging from the non-human sidekick and the cleavage,  it looks like it’s aimed at boys in their early teens. The link is to the page where I got this cell.

The speaker might be in character to make the goof, and the artist actually knows better, right? After all, with a Spanish/German/Japanese name, he ought to be really good at English, right?

You know what the mistake is, right? We have a nominative being used as a direct object. Nominative is the general term for what my English teacher called the subjective case, because it was used for the subject of sentences. In every other Indo-European language (far as I know) they call it the nominative.

Remember your English teacher saying that with the imperative, you have an implied subject, “you”?  So “Sit down” is really “(you) sit down.” Or in this case, (you) let Sandra and ME deal with your son’s abduction.”

I brought your attention to this example because this mistake most often happens with compound objects of prepositions (it was between him and I) and less often with a direct object. It often happens in the writing and speech of people who fancy themselves as edumacated. They picked it up from being corrected as children, when they started to say something like “Me and Tom went fishing” and the authority figure at hand said, ” ahem. Tom and I went fishing, and is that why you are so muddy?”

So how do you prevent this solecism? The culprit the compound construction. Say the sentence without the compound. Then the wrong way sounds wrong. So: “Let me deal with your son’s abduction.”

Now I think I’ll go see what happened to that son.

We use the subjective (nominative) case for two things in English—the subject of a sentence or clause, which everyone gets pretty much correct pretty much all the time. The other place for the nominative is in a construction called the predicate nominative. Remember that term? I’ll explain it later. First we need two items of background.

First, think about how basic sentences are constructed in English. One basic sentence goes Subject, Verb, Direct Object. In that order. Since English has dropped a lot of inflectional endings, the order is usually important. Tom saw Mike is different from Mike saw Tom. (Notice that both names have the same form in both places) A lot of languages put a syllable or so at the end of a word to indicate how it’s used in the sentence. In Greek, for example, we might have something equivalent to Tomos saw Mikeon and Mikeos saw Tomon. That -os and -on are inflectional endings. It’s handy, in a way, to have inflectional endings because if you write Mikeon Tomos saw, your reader would know who saw whom without needing the word order. In fact the Greeks played with word order a lot because they could, with all those inflectional endings, and they had a lot of them.

Direct objects aren’t in the nominative case; they ‘re in the objective case, even if English doesn’t use an inflection to say so. Hence the ‘whom’ in the previous paragraph. That -m on whom is an inflectional ending. Literally, if I had written “who saw who.” I could have been writing about someone looking at his reflection in the mirror. (You might object that the reader can figure it out from the context. True, but that violates one of the main tenets of good writng. I mention it in that freebie order form in the right margin of this blog, but if you ask me directly, I’ll just tell you.)

When you think about word order, a predicate adjective looks a lot like a direct object.

Now the second bit of background, the verb “to be.” This word, in every language I have any acquaintance with, breaks a lot of rules that apply to most verbs. For one thing, it’s always irregular. You have to learn the different forms; it doesn’t follow the patterns most other verbs follow. We say, for example,  “I see, you see, he sees” but “I am, you are, he is.” No pattern.  Another thing about “to be” is that it is equivalent to an equals sign, but almost every other verb is equivalent to doing something. When Tom sees, he is doing something. But when Tom is the boss, that means Tom=boss.

Since both ends of a sentence containing some form of “to be” are equivalent, we use the nominative. We would say Tomos is the bossos.  The correct case is easier to remember in highly inflected languages. In English, where word order is so important, we get used to the pattern of having the objective case at the end of the sentence, so we tend use it all the time. “It’s me, Oh Lord, standin’ in the need of prayer” goes the song.

My Freshman English professor told this story:

St. Peter, at the pearly gates: Who’s there?

Person: “It is I.”

St. Peter: Ah, an English teacher!

So there you have it. Verbs of being take the nominative. Officially. I suppose it’s a losing battle, but at least now you know.

And I humbly beg the indulgence and forgiveness of you Greek scholars out there.