When to use who or whom?

[MrPedantic]

I would agree that (in my experience of BrE, at least):

1. Fronted "whom" (e.g. "Whom did you give the book to?") will sound odd to many (or most) native speakers; "Who...to?" is by far the more common form.

2. "Whom" after a preposition (e.g. "I met several people with whom I later had a business relationship") is still quite common, both in speech and in written English; especially where the relative clause is quite long.

From discussions elsewhere, it seems to me that the pseudo-dative¹ who(m), e.g. "who did you give the book?", "who did you write?", may sound odder to BrE ears than AmE.

MrP

¹ I think "whom" derives from the OE dative; which may explain its uncomfortable status, in ordinary English.

[rewboss]

Not wishing to turn this into an argument, but:

Originally Posted by Humble

You can't possibly deny it in I gave it to Mom and I gave it (a dog) a piece of bread reflects different relations between the subject and the object.

I'm not sure what you mean here, but how can you tell the difference between the direct and the indirect object in each sentence? It's not the case, because there is no difference at all between "it" as a direct object and "it" as an indirect object. The only difference is that "to" appears in the first sentence, indicating that the second object is indirect; in the second sentence, the omission of "to" indicates that the second object is direct.

Russian, on the other hand, has a well-developed case system with, as you say, six cases and at least two subcases. You could rearrange the words in a Russian clause quite radically and the meaning would not change; in English, if you rearrange the words, the meaning often changes.

I don't know what nationality crussell is, so I don't know how useful this discussion is to him/her.

[Humble]

No argument, God forbid.
Yes, my statement was badly worded. Of course it does not reflect anything, only it's position does.
I meant, though it (unlike who-whom) is unchangeable, the Russian speaker will easily tell you whether it is nominative, accusative or dative in any sentence, because we are used to parsing cases from school. I thihk it isn't a problem for German speakers either.
BTW do you happen to know any sites where linguistic scholars would have grammar discussions?

[MrPedantic]

Originally Posted by Humble

BTW do you happen to know any sites where linguistic scholars would have grammar discussions?

We are duly put in our place...



Ah well. Back to my Beano Annual.

MrP

[Humble]

Hi, MrP,
No offence meant.
I just presumed such forums as this one cater mostly for ESLs and discuss practical usage, not purely academic niceties. I can't help feeling a bit guilty (I may bore people) when I have a temptation to get into depths and split hairs.
Yes, I've seen long threads on linguistic discussions here, but I found myself shunning them as sometimes they leave me with a heavy heart.

I thought I'd find a site that would represent different grammar schools. I don't agree, for instance, that commemoration serves as an adjective in commemoration ceremony and I'd like to find out somewhere if I'm the only one to think so (searching for justification of course ).

Regards

[MikeNewYork]

Originally Posted by Humble

Hi, MrP,
No offence meant.
I just presumed such forums as this one cater mostly for ESLs and discuss practical usage, not purely academic niceties. I can't help feeling a bit guilty (I may bore people) when I have a temptation to get into depths and split hairs.
Yes, I've seen long threads on linguistic discussions here, but I found myself shunning them as sometimes they leave me with a heavy heart.

I thought I'd find a site that would represent different grammar schools. I don't agree, for instance, that commemoration serves as an adjective in commemoration ceremony and I'd like to find out somewhere if I'm the only one to think so (searching for justification of course ).

Regards

Do you disagree that "commemoration" tells us what kind of "ceremony" it is?

[blueabell2go]

I was intrigued by Rewboss's comment that Russian has six cases and two sub-cases. From what I remember learning at school (almost 40 years ago)Russian has 6 cases:
nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental and prepositional. I can't say that I remember learning about subcases.
Could Rewboss or some of the native Russian speakers explain this.

[Humble]

I don't seem to know abt the subcases either. I'll find that out.

Yes, Mike, I do agree it tells, but I'd put it this way: commemoration is a noun that serves as an attribute. The difference is that as denotes a function, while adjective can't, it's from morhology. Sorry if I repeat myself.

[MikeNewYork]

Originally Posted by Humble

I don't seem to know abt the subcases either. I'll find that out.

Yes, Mike, I do agree it tells, but I'd put it this way: commemoration is a noun that serves as an attribute. The difference is that as denotes a function, while adjective can't, it's from morhology. Sorry if I repeat myself.

Well, you will be happy to know that many people refer to that type of noun as an attributive noun.

[MrPedantic]

Originally Posted by Humble

Hi, MrP,
No offence meant.

Sorry, Humble, I was only joking!

I've seen long threads on linguistic discussions here, but I found myself shunning them as sometimes they leave me with a heavy heart.

And a heavy phone-bill, if you pay as you go.

All the best,

MrP