Kent,

The traditional analysis runs roughly as follows:

The infinitive (to become...) is the object of the verb want, and
therefore has the objective case applied to it. The subject of the
infinitive, if there were one, would therefore take the objective case.
The infinitive doesn't have an overt subject, but the subject complement
matches the case of the subject, so in this case 'him' is perfectly
correct. is in the objective (accusative ) case.

Personally, I have some problems with this analysis, but even with a
more linguistically up-to-date account, you reach the same point:
complements can be in the objective case without being objects themselves.

Karl Hagen
Department of English
Mount St. Mary's College


Kent Johnson wrote:

>Johanna,
>
>If "to become" can't take an object, what do we make of the very
>reasonable sounding construction, "I don't want to become him"? (I don't
>mean an elided "*like* him," but more like the pauper objecting to
>becoming the prince, for instance).
>
>Should such a statement properly be, "I don't want to become he"? That
>sounds funny, doesn't it?
>
>And I don't mean to beat an objective horse, but I still don't
>understand what we are supposed to do with that "who." I know about how
>the who/whom question is determined be the pronoun's function within the
>clause, and I try to teach my composition students the principle as best
>I can, when the need arises. But normally when one recasts a relative
>clause, it makes perfect sense. In this case, I still don't quite see
>how we can accept the sentence essentially saying, "Return without delay
>to become you truly are he."
>
>Kent
>
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