Cece
Guest
|
| Posted: Mon Nov 22, 2004 6:01 pm
Post subject: Re: "about whom I was": Boo! [was: Re: The Apologist] |
|
|
Bob Cunningham <exw6sxq@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<uf53q014gr4mmqd541sasqjkpqqhii3cut@4ax.com>...
| Quote: | On Sun, 21 Nov 2004 18:01:06 GMT, "Alan Jones"
atj@blueyonder.co.uk> said:
"Bob Cunningham" <exw6sxq@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:4mgvp0pkf89krfosh11sf6cfunse39seng@4ax.com...
On Sat, 20 Nov 2004 12:19:19 -0500, Ben Zimmer
bgzimmer@midway.uchicago.edu> said:
[...]
" [...] not having had the courage to be open about
whom I was."
[...]
As Liberman puts it, the overriding grammatical principle for "whom"
usage in such examples is "stringwise adjacency to the preposition"
("of whom...", "about whom...").
The proper parse here is that the object of "about" is the
clause *"whom I was", so "who" is correct.
The sense of the statement doesn't have to do with "about
whom", but "about (who I was)".
This Liberman, whoever he is or was, would better have said
something like, "The overriding tendency to use the wrong
pronoun is driven by the common misconception that the case
of the pronoun depends only upon whether or not it's
immediately preceded by a preposition".
Did you look at what he actually writes?
No. I didn't read it. I guess I should have.
He appears to be analysing and accounting for the
erroneous "whom", not excusing or validating it.
I'm glad to hear that, and I apologize to him for my
careless and unsubstantiated criticism of his remarks.
|
And it should be "who," not "whom," anyway! "Who I was" is correct;
"whom I was" is ... nonstandard. I wish everybody would just stop
using "whom"!
Cece
|
|
The Grammer Genious
Guest
|
| Posted: Sat Nov 27, 2004 6:10 am
Post subject: Re: "about whom I was": Boo! [was: Re: The Apologist] |
|
|
Cece wrote:
| Quote: | And it should be "who," not "whom," anyway! "Who I was" is correct;
"whom I was" is ... nonstandard. <...
|
"Nonstandard" is not the opposite of "correct." ("Wrong" is.)
The new rule is that when the relative pronoun "who"
directly precedes a subject and a verb, it becomes "whom."
Whether that relative pronoun is the object of that verb or
not has nothing whatever to do with it. If you think it
does, then you are confusing this new rule with the
*standard* rule, which is different and which is slowly
being selected out.
| Quote: | I wish everybody would just stop
using "whom"!
|
That's not gonna happen. "Whom" is too high-class of a word.
\\P. Schultz |
|
FAQ
Memberlist
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in