On Fri, 3 Oct 1997, Wanda VanGoor wrote:
 
> Here's a good sentence to try the pronoun form on.  I took it from a
> handbook--
>
>      The jury was astonished when the witness suddenly confessed that
> the murderer was none other than he.
>
> I see "than" here as a preposition, substituting for "except" or "but."
> If it is, then on objective case is called for--but the "he" has already
> been identified as the speaker, so "himself" might be a better choice.
> "Than" is not a conjunction here, for the "he" is not the subject of an
> understood verb.
>
> Responses?
>
 
1.  The utterance is a stylistically frozen construction that is not
syntactically analyzable in terms of pronoun case form rules.
 
2.  The phrase "none other than" is not actually part of the syntactic
structure of the utterance.  It is an interupting phrase, a sort of
embedded modifier if you will.  Or maybe, the phrase "was none other
than" is actually a type of linking verb in the VP predicate.
 
3.  Compare with "The person responsible was none other than I/me".
WHich one seems right here?
 
4.  What happens when there is a complement (not a relative clause):
There were none other than he/him eating the food.  (Also, what is the
correct verb form here, were or was).
 
5.  Trasnform the syntax:  The murderer was none other than he ==>
He was none other than the murderer.  Supports the idea of analyzing "was
none other than" as the simple verb.
 
6.  Ellipses after 'than' allows that the (pro)noun is the subject of
a  deleted clause:  The murderer was none other than he (was the
murderer).
 
7.  Case morphology for pronouns in English is an obsolete reflex of the
grammar of an earlier stage of the language. We should allow the leveling
of the who/whom distinction to continue and recognize that there can be
no competence-based explanation for the distribution of the remaining
personal pronouns.  I/me, he/him, she/her function to make person
reference.  Semantic role function (agent/patient) is indicated by
syntax in English, not word form.  The persisting morphology in the
pronoun system serves no grammatical function.  The interesting
question, though, is what is the semantic role in this kind of
existential utterance.
 
 
Virtually, Terry
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Terry Lynn Irons        [log in to unmask]
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