Archive for the ‘Pronoun case’ Category

Newer Entries »

Inventory of who/whom postings

November 15, 2009

Another inventory, this time of Language Log postings about who vs. whom. The inventory isn’t annotated, and it might not be complete.

GP, 4/17/04: I really don’t care whom (link)

ML, 4/18/04: Whom humor (link)

GP, 9/10/04: The coming death of whom: photo evidence (link)

ML, 11/9/04: Talking about whom you are and who you’re seeking (link)

ML, 10/22/05: Whomever controls language controls politics (link)

ML, 12/2/06: Class consciousness (link)

HH, 12/21/06: Dog whistles for linguists (link)

AZ, 1/5/07: Whom? (link)

AZ, 1/8/07, Marxist quotation (link)

AZ, 1/23/07: Whom shall I say [ ___ is calling ]? (link)

AZ, 1/28/07: Relevance of a different kind (link)

ML, 5/3/07: A note of dignity or austerity (link)

AZ, 6/18/07: ISOC, ESOC (link)

ML, 8/29/08: It’s whom (link)

AZ, 9/8/07: Whom was that masked man? (link)

BZ, 10/24/07: It’s a made-up word used to trick students (link)

ML, 10/26/07: Cold comfort for whomever (link)

AZ, 4/11/08: Wikipedia gets it half right (link)

AZ, 7/30/08: Not exactly a smackdown (link)

Posted in For reference, Pronoun case | 2 Comments »

In the NYT

August 30, 2009

On the New York Times op-ed page of August 11, two very different finds: an odd whom from Benjamin Netanyahu (the Israeli prime minister) and a scholarly reminiscence of the late anthropologist Ann Dunham Soetoro (Barack Obama’s mother). (more…)

Posted in Pronoun case, Social life | 2 Comments »

Sotomayoral NomConjObj

June 23, 2009

“My poor friend,” she [Sonia Sotomayor] recalled years later in a speech honoring Mr. Cabranes, “he spent all that time listening to José and I dissect the Puerto Rican colonial spirit.” (David D. Kirkpatrick, “Judge’s Mentor: Part Guide, Part Foil”, NYT 6/22/09, p. 1)

José and I here is an instance of a nominative conjoined object (NomConjObj, for short) — from a decidedly educated speaker. Indeed, I have many examples of NomConjObjs from family, friends, and academic colleagues, mostly in speech but sometimes in informal writing as well.

A particularly likely context for them is in objects functioning as the notional subject of a following constituent (marked infinitival VP, bare VP, or predicative phrase) — as in the Sotomayor example, where José and I functions as the notional subject of the bare VP dissect the Puerto Rican colonial spirit. The conjoined NP “feels” subject-like to many speakers.

But a substantial number of the examples I’ve collected are not in this especially favorable context, but are just ordinary objects:

This is going to require the cooperation of Sali and I. (NWAV speaker, 10/22/05)

He came to my husband and I at M. D. Anderson [Cancer Center in Houston] and we treated him with radiation. (M.D. interviewed in NYT Science Times, 8/2/05)

For you and I, that’s not a very exciting diet… (British biologist on PBS program Origins, seen 8/30/05)

NomConjObjs have been savaged by usage critics as one of the worst offenses against grammar in modern English. James Cochrane, for instance, chose to honor them in the title of his sour little book of criticism Between You and I: A Little Book of Bad English (2004). But look at the Between you and I entry in MWDEU and the Language Log discussions by me in 2005 and Geoff Pullum in 2006.

Geoff’s discussion makes the important points (a) that people who use NomConjObjs are not confused about the distinction between subjects and objects, but are using pronoun case in coordination according to a somewhat different system from the grammar-book prescriptions; and (b) that whether this system should be accounted as acceptable in standard English is a separate (and much more difficult) question from how the system works.

Posted in Pronoun case, Syntax, Usage advice | 5 Comments »

Newer Entries »