Read my post closely, please. I said 'rapidly disappearing', not 'has
disappeared'. I was also talking about speech, not writing--about the
competence of children entering school. I suspect that, except after
prepositions, most school kids would have to be taught rules for when to
use 'whom'.

I'm willing to bet that 'whom' appears ONLY after prepositions in the
speech of most younger people. The preposition is the cue that 'whom'
must be used; there is no sense of case. These are, essentially, frozen
constructions. If there were  a sense of case, 'whom' would be being
used a lot more in speech and in 'who do you trust' type situations.
Also, moving the preposition is characteristic of more-formal registers,
and using 'whom' there may be a signal of formality rather than case.
How often are prepositions moved in speech, esp.  casual speech?

Written English is usually edited, so it is not terribly reflective of
the competence of the original author.  The 'whoms' may have been
inserted by an editor, or even the author him/herself in deliberative
revising. Also, the use of 'whom' does not reflect knowledge of the
rules for case-correct use. Consider this tidbit from a recent LA Times:

(parental favoritism of one sibling over another is one of several
important factors) 'which influence whom a child will become' (the exact
reference is not at hand).

My remark was based on informal observation, but I'm still willing to
bet that there is little use of 'whom' in spoken English among people
younger than 35 or so, and that their use is guided, not by knowledge of
case rules, but by signals such as a preceding preposition.

What do Biber et al. have to say about 'who' in nominal and relative
clauses? Is there case-correct data from speech for examples like 'the
woman whom I met last night' or 'whom you should give it to is not clear'?

What are other listers' intuitions about how well their kids command
'whom'? Is this something that you have to spend classroom time on?

By the way, this example sheds some light on the usefulness of the
notion 'construction'. Grammatical change can happen in a language by
starting in some constructions and slowly spreading to others. So it is
not odd that 'whom' would disapper from questions, but still be used
after prepositions, since these are different constructions.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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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