An Interesting Comment

I hardly ever get comments to this blog, but I posted a link to one of my posts on Google+ the other day, and a friend made a comment that’s not only worth repeating, but it deserves a post! Go follow the link if you want to see the cause for the comment. Here’s his comment:

I think I get it right most of the time…but still have a hard time saying, “Whom do you think you are!?”….the other thing you taught me and I keep forgetting is where the quote marks go in a sentence…not sure I got it right above…

Lorin Walker (a former boss, by the way, and still a friend) says he has trouble saying “whom do you think you are?” Well, he should have trouble saying that, but not for the reason he thinks! We usually put the subject first in English, and the nominative (subject) form of the word is indeed “who.” So we’re used to putting “who” at the beginning of a sentence.

With questions, however, the subject generally doesn’t come first, the object does, and that’s where “whom” comes in. So you generally start a question with “whom.” Except for one thing: the type of verb.

Remember predicate nominatives? They look like direct objects, except they go with linking verbs (mainly some form of “to be” but also other verbs that are equivalent to an equals sign, such as seem and appear.) So in Lorin’s example sentence, the first word goes with (is the predicate nominative of) the last word, “are”! He could say “Who do you thing you are?” with impunity, and be so correct that he’d fool a lot of amateur grammar nazis.

PS: I just now saw a headline, in the Los Angeles Times, no less:

Who does your member of Congress support for president?

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Okay, I favor using “whom” wherever it’s grammatically appropriate. “Whom” tends to be unpopular because you have to think to use it correctly, especially when you create a sentence that’s not a basic declarative sentence. “Whom” is still useful, though. Here’s why I think “whom” will fall out of use. This is a passage from a writer whom I respect, and who, I’m sure, knows how and when to use the word correctly. (I made the incorrect words bold, in case there was any doubt.)

It wasn’t the who-drafted-who part. I know who drafted who.

I won’t cite the source because it’s not important. You can find passages like this all over the place. I think the writer decided to use “who” to fit the tone of his writing. He no doubt knows how to write a direct object, but he decided the “when” dictated using “who,” as in, “When I’m writing to fans of professional athletics, I shouldn’t regale them with stuffy grammar techniques.”

I still think using “whom” in those sentences would be a little snappier, but hey, he’s a professional and can make his own editorial decisions. (Besides, I’m more of a curmudgeon than he.) Because more professionals are doing this, I think the battle is going the way of not using “whom” at all. I’m not quite ready for it yet.

Here’s an example of someone giving in to this movement who shouldn’t have. It’s a heading on a page of a professionally written website about one of the largest companies in the world.

Who we hire

Seems inappropriate to me to go the informal route here, especially considering the international flavor of the company. If they don’t want to say “Whom we hire,” they could write something like “The people we hire.”

Harrumpf.

PS I just ran into this sentence in my company’s Standards of Ethics and Business Conduct document. They got it right!

You are responsible for ensuring that your own conduct and the conduct of those whom you observe (and, if you are a supervisor, the conduct of those who report to you) is honest and ethical at all times and complies not only with the law but also with our policies and these Standards.

I’ve brought up the subject of correct use of who and whom several times in this blog. (Do a search on the words in the field to the right and you’ll find several.) Here’s another situation that’s easy to get wrong, especially if you’re used to using whom after a preposition, which is usually correct. First the quote, from This Day in History for January 11:

In the first flight of its kind, American aviator Amelia Earhart departs Wheeler Field in Honolulu, Hawaii, on a solo flight to North America. Hawaiian commercial interests offered a $10,000 award to whoever accomplished the flight first.

What’s that who(ever) doing after the preposition “to”? Shouldn’t it be “whomever”? Nope! Here’s why: Prepositions take an object, which is a noun or pronoun—or a noun clause, which we have here. See that verb (accomplished)? Verbs need subjects, and that’s where the “whoever” comes in. It’s the subject of the verb “accomplished.”  The whole noun clause is the object of “to.”  The rule with clauses is to go from the inside out, and since “whoever” is inside the clause, that takes precedence over being right after the preposition.

Here’s an example of how to do it wrong, from the February issue of Scientific American, no less. Page 18, if you want to find it yourself.

Authorities are concerned not just with the volume of the ivory trade, but with whom is doing the killing.

Watch out for those noun clauses and your writing will fly better.

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.

This use of “whom” is correct. Why does it sound wrong?

Good old Dagwood. From Sept 2013

The reason is because word order is important in English. The rules of word order aren’t absolute in English, but we pretty strongly like to have the subject come right before the verb. Since we don’t use many inflections, word order steps in to tell us the function of a word. Lots of times we spell nouns and verbs exactly alike. Without word order, we can’t tell. Take “run,” for instance. is it a noun or a verb? Depends.

This dog run looks pretty clean.

Would you run to the store for me?

In front of the verb, “run” is a noun, a place for dogs to hang out. After the subject, it’s a verb, something you do.

Highly inflected languages, such as Greek, care less about word order. In fact in Greek, they have a figure of speech called “chiasmus,” which means to arrange the words in a symmetrical order by part of speech. For example: adjective, noun, adverb, verb, adverb, noun, adjective. You use the inflections to tell what goes with what. It’s pretty hard (though not utterly impossible) to do this in English.

So on to the Dagwood cartoon. “Whom” is in front of the verb “talking.” That makes it feel wrong, even though it’s right. Actually, the “to” is out of place. Literally the sentence is “Do you realize to whom you are talking?” Of course, that’s even stiffer than the original.

Ah English. Sometimes you just can’t win.