Another Tricky Who-Whom Usage

First, here’s the comic. First panel:

It’s supposed to be “to whom,” (whomever) right? No! Not this time!

Remember the rule: go from the inside out.

“Whomever” is the subject of the clause whose verb is “wants.” It’s “Whoever wants one.”

The “to” is just a preposition with the noun clause “whoever wants one” as its object.

Tricky!

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Here’s the sentence, from a guy I read regularly:

This isn’t about Suzi, but her predecessor, Vaska, a Rhodesian ridgeback who was very good on leash but would nearly tear my arm from its socket if he spotted the letter carrier, who he knew carried doggy cookies.

Toward the end: “who he [the dog] knew carried doggie cookies.”

Shouldn’t that be “whom” before “he knew”? He knew him, right?

Nope!

The rule is you go from the inside out. The dog knew he carried doggie cookies. “Who” is the subject of the subordiante clause, “who carried doggie cookies,” and he is the subject of the main clause, “he knew.”

Tricky tricky. Don’t let the word order fool you!

Here’s a slightly related comic from that essay because I like to have pictures in my posts.

“Who” appears in all three panels. Are they correct?

Ready for the answers?

Panel 1: correct. “who” is the subject of the clause, which is nominative, so “who.”

Panel 2: incorrect! The object of a preposition (“to”) should be in the objective case, so “whom.”

Panel 3: correct. “who” is a predicate nominative (after “that is”), so “who.”

So how did you do?

PS—I found another example of a wrong “whom.” Second panel. The “whomever” is the subject of the sentence, so it should be “whoever”:

I think I mentioned in the past that “who” is for referring to people, and “that” is for referring to things. Lots of people use “that” for both. Don’t!

Here’s a good example of why that makes a difference.

One of the five Finnish government parties is digging its heels in over new legislation for indigenous people that would enshrine their rights in Finnish law.

• “That” refers to “legislation”
• “Who” refers to indigenous people.

Since “People” is closer to the word, you might be inclined to think it refers to the people.

So who does the enshrining? The people or the legislation?

Here’s the picture that goes with the headline:

After the lesson on correct use of “who” and “whom” two posts ago, this jumped out at me. Last panel. Is he correct or not?

Come on, you can do it!