I think I'd make the argument that whom has never regularized as a relative pronoun in English. Old English distinguished, like any well-behaved Germanic language, between question words, which started with hw, and demonstratives, which started with a dental, an eth or edh. German maintains this distinction consistently. However, in the 10th and 11th cc., after the rise of Christianity in Britain and the spread of Latin learning in the monasteries, English writers, largely monks and all Latin educated, began using indefinite pronouns, which were question words, as relative pronounns. Up till that time, English didn't have relative pronouns but used demonstratives or an indeclinable tha, rather like German again. Whom was not one of the relative pronouns that developed at this time. The Norman Conquest put a end to the West Saxon literary language and therefore to the development of wh words as relative pronouns, because now people wrote in French or Latin. In the 13th, when significant amounts of English writing began to appear again, the shift in use of wh words als began again, but this was now in Mercian, not in West Saxon, and the two developments are not linked. The first word to make the shift was what, with which close behind. The last to make the shift completely was who. Whom never made the change because the change stopped before whom was accepted as a relpro. The 18th c. grammarians, with their passion for logic and order, decided that whom ought to be used relatively as well.
There are a couple of implications from this history. First, the use of wh relatives is largely, if not entirely, a function of educated and written language. Those parts of society that never had much formal education tend not to do much with wh relatives and tend to hypercorrect quite a lot when they do get used. Further, whom is a problem not because people are losing the rule but because the rule never really got fixed in the language, beyond 18th c. decrees. It is those decrees that are still with us and have joined that significant body of language myth that composes a sizable part of prescriptive grammar.
Herb Stahlke
<<< [log in to unmask] 8/21 5:42p >>>
Yes, speakers of English have some sense of case that guides them in use
of pronouns other than 'who', at least when a pronoun appears alone
rather than in a conjoined structure. But I would say that, absent a
preceding preposition, it may well be true that "no one has a clear
understanding of when to use who and when to use whom". Again, the
preposition is the cue to use 'whom', not whatever sense of case guides
people in the use of other pronouns. Children learn to use 'whom' after
a preposition because they hear it used there; this is probably the last
construction in which use of 'whom' is consistent. 'Whom' has not
entirely disappeared from 'middle-class English', but it is on its way out.
If it were a sense of case that guided people in using 'whom' after a
preposition, then people would use 'whom' a lot more in other
situations, such as questions. They would use that sense of case more widely.
So, do Biber et al. have any data on nominal and relative clauses with 'who'?
And I'd still like to know from other listers whether they have to work
with their students on who/whom. This would be one kind of evidence of
how strong knowledge of the case rules for 'whom' are, no? Do you find
yourself correcting 'whom' errors in student papers? I do. When students
ask, I tell them to use the pronoun-substitution trick: substitute
'he/him' or 'she/her' or 'they/them'. This gets tricky in relative
clauses, since the student has to restore the clause to its basic order:
The man whom I met yesterday -- I met _him_ yesterday ...
And in cases like the one Edith cited, the 'disjunctive' (a la French)
use of object-case pronouns gets in the way:
we know who you are --- you are her/him vs. you are he/she ... many
speakers would feel that 'you are her' sounds right.
In a survey of middle-class workers that I conducted with my students a
few years ago, I got these responses to who/whom sentences:
The police will arrest whomever is caught entering the condemned
structure. (should be 'whoever')
Do not see an error: 33%
See error, but it does not bother them: 14%
Total: 47% of respondents
A short list of finalists will be compiled from the candidates who we
interview. (should be 'whom')
Do not see an error: 8%
See error, but it does not bother them: 15%
Total: 24% of respondents
This group's task is to choose the employees whom the President will
greet. (no error; 'whom' is correct)
See an error, and are bothered by it a lot: 8.5%
See an error, and are somewhat bothered by it: 35%
Total: 43.5%
67% of the respondents were 35 or older. These data show that there is
some confusion about 'whom' even among older respondents. (I should say
that I had to assume that the respondents were reacting to the 'who/m'
usages and not some other part of the sentence. We didn't build in a way
to be sure of this.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba Associate Professor, Linguistics
English Department, California Polytechnic State University
One Grand Avenue * San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. (805)-756-2184 * Fax: (805)-756-6374 * Dept. Phone. 756-2596
* E-mail: [log in to unmask] * Home page: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
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