Who (pronoun)

The pronoun who, in English, is the interrogative and relative pronoun that is used to refer to humans.

The corresponding interrogative pronouns for non-sentient beings are what and which, and the relative pronouns are that and which. That and which are sometimes used in contexts where who might be a more suitable choice, and who is likewise used in contexts where that or which would be a more suitable choice. In addition, the possessive version of the non-sentient pronouns is the same as that of who: whose takes this role for all of them; e.g., "I will have to fix the car whose engine I ruined".

English grammar series
English grammar Contraction Disputes in English grammar English compound English honorifics English personal pronouns English plural English relative clauses English verbs English irregular verbs English modal verb Gender in English

In etymology, the spelling represents the expected outcome of Old English hwā, while the actual pronunciation represents a divergent outcome. It is cognate with Latin quis and Greek ποιός.

Case forms

Traditionally, who is the subjective (nominative) form only. According to traditional prescriptive grammar, who is a subjective pronoun (subject of the side clause), and whom is the corresponding objective and dative pronoun (an object of the side clause). Whose is the possessive form, which is sometimes confused with who's, a contraction of who is or who has. See also: English declension.

• He is someone who is a great guy. ("Who" is subject of the subordinate clause)
• He is someone to whom I owe a great deal. ("I" is subject; "whom" is the object referring to the sentence subject he)
• He is someone whom I admire. ("I" is subject; "whom" is the object referring to the sentence subject he)
• He is someone whose help I appreciate. ("Whose" is adjunct to help which is possessed by the sentence subject he)

The form who is replacing whom in objective case contexts. As early as the 1970s, the who–whom distinction was identified as having "slipped so badly that [it is] almost totally uninformative".

According to the OED (2nd edition, 1989), whom is "no longer current in natural colloquial speech". Lasnik & Sobin 2000 argue that surviving occurrences of whom are not part of ordinary English grammar, but the result of extra-grammatical rules for producing "prestige" forms.

Whom remains in significant use following a preposition^{[citation needed]} (see examples immediately below). In informal contexts, the preposition may instead be placed at the end (see preposition stranding), and the word who may be omitted where it is used as a relative pronoun. For example:

• (Relative, formal): He is someone to whom I owe a great deal.
• (Interrogative, formal): To whom did you give it?
• (Relative, informal): He is someone (who) I owe a great deal to.
• (Interrogative, informal): Who did you give it to?

The person and number associated with who and whom is that of the antecedent. (Bernstein, The Careful Writer, Atheneum (1986), p. 479.)

• I, who am having a hard time right now, won't be able to help you.
• I, a tired old man who is fed up with all your nonsense, refuse to help you.
• I, who know very well what is going on, refuse to take any part in this.
• I, a well-informed person who knows very well what is going on, refuse to take part in this.

Rules for determining who vs. whom in traditional usage

Use with prepositions

Whom is the form used when it is the object of a preposition. Again, this is analogous to personal pronouns, for which the objective form is also used after a preposition. For example:

• To whom have you been talking? (Compare: You have been talking to him.)
• For whom have you taken these marvellous photographs? (You have taken these marvelous photographs for him.)
• With whom are you going to the cinema? (You are going to the cinema with him.)
• He sent gifts to his granddaughter, of whom he was fond. (He sent gifts to his granddaughter; he was fond of her.)

Forms with who in which the preposition does not immediately precede the pronoun are commonly judged acceptable in informal use, and in spoken use especially:

• He sent gifts to his granddaughter, who he was fond of.

However, this form often violates the (separately controversial) rule against ending a sentence with a preposition, so the traditional objective form may be preferable, even in speech.^{[citation needed]}

Indirect object with or without to

The indirect object is normally formed with to or for making it an example of usage with prepositions (i.e.to whom or for whom).

• You will tell the story to whom you choose.

When the direct object is omitted, whom can be used alone to represent the indirect object. Dropping the preposition requires reordering the sentence structure to prevent grammar errors.

• Incorrect: You will tell the story whom you choose.
• Correct: You will tell whom you choose the story.

Depending on the English style being used and objects being discussed, dropping the preposition from a sentence may not be correct. Formal English is impersonal, so the focus is on the impersonal object. Informal English is personal, so the focus shifts to the personal object.

• Correct Formal English: You will tell the story to whom? (i.e. You will tell the story to John.)
• Correct Informal English: You will tell whom the story? (i.e. You will tell John the story.)

How to use whom has been confused by the erroneous and colloquial use of who. When the preposition is dropped or does not immediately precede the pronoun, who is common.

Informal English:

• Who will you tell a story to?
• To who will you tell a story?

Formal English:

• Whom will you tell a story to?
• To whom will you tell a story?

Whoever, whomever, and variants

According to modern guides to English usage, the relative pronouns whoever and whomever (along with their old variants whosoever and whomsoever) take the case appropriate to their internal clause:

• Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods.

Whoever is in the nominative because it is the subject of undertakes in the noun clause whoever undertakes [...], not because of any relation to is. (The subject of is is whoever undertakes [...].)

Similarly:

• Let whoever is without sin cast the first stone.

Whoever is in the nominative because it is the subject of is. (The object of let is whoever is without sin.)

In this case, whomever is used:

• Whomever you meet there is bound to be interesting.

The accusative form whomever is considered right, because it is the object of meet within the internal clause whomever you meet there (compare: you meet her [or him] there), while whomever you meet there as a whole (rather than simply whomever) is the subject of is.

Actual usage is variable: whomever is often employed and defended where modern prescriptive rules would require whoever, just as whom is often used as the subject of a verb in more complex situations (see next section).

Subject whom

A special problem arises in constructions like this:

• Beethoven, who you say was a great composer, wrote only one opera. (Compare: "You say he [never him] was a great composer.")

The form given with who is safe, and even beyond reproach (since who is the subject of was). Nevertheless, many use and defend “whom” in such a sentence. The use of whom may arise from confusion with a form like this, in which whom is used according to the standard rules:

• Beethoven, whom you believe a great composer, wrote only one opera.

It may be unclear whether the clause whom you believe a great composer should follow the rules for you believe him to be a great composer (taking objective case) or you believe that he is a great composer (taking the subjective).

Here is an example from The Age newspaper (Melbourne, Australia), which in April 1999 syndicated an article from the Washington Post concerning the Columbine massacre:

• But if others were involved, it was Harris and Klebold whom students said seemed the tightest, who stood apart from the rest of their clique.

The Washington Post's original article "correctly" had who students said, but The Age altered this as a matter of house style to whom students said. (The continuation with the parallel construction who stood apart illustrates how The Age style can lead to inconsistencies.)

The King James Bible has the problematic whom as a subject at least six times.

• He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? (Matthew 16:15; cf. Matthew 16:13, Mark 8:27,29, Luke 9:18,20)

(Technically, ye is the subject associated with the verb say in But whom say ye that I am? and I is the subject associated with the verb am. Who[m] is a subject complement, as it would be in Who am I? or I am who? It is not an object complement.)

There are similar examples in Shakespeare:

• Young Ferdinand, whom they suppose is drown'd, [...] (The Tempest, III, 3)

• [...] going to seek the grave / Of Arthur, whom they say is kill'd to-night / On your suggestion. (King John, IV, 2)

Daniel Defoe also uses subject whom, here apparently affected by the proximity of him:

• They told me that when they were so knocked down, the rest of their company rescued them, and stood over them fighting till they were come to themselves, all but him whom they thought had been dead;[...] (The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Chapter 6, Part 1)

In this case, who[m] is the subject of had been dead.

The OED traces subject whom back to the 15th century, while Jespersen cites even earlier examples from Chaucer; the use of whom in these cases was standard throughout the Old English and Middle English periods.

Avoid the problem

William Safire, former speechwriter for U.S. President Richard Nixon and U.S. Vice President Spiro Agnew and long-time language columnist for The New York Times Magazine, suggested the following:

"The best rule for dealing with who vs. whom is this: Whenever whom is required, recast the sentence. This keeps a huge section of the hard disk of your mind available for baseball averages."

Historic grammatical development of who and whom

"Grammatical change differs from lexical and phonetic […] change in at least two important respects. First, it generally unfolds much more slowly, often taking hundreds of years to run its course to completion; and second, it tends to proceed below the threshold of speakers‟ conscious awareness. (which makes introspection-based statements […] unreliable.)" (Mair, 2006, p. 82)

Taking this general statement on grammatical change into consideration one has to admit that a demise of whom cannot be ascertained at once but has to be examined carefully over a certain period of time, for instance through an examination of corpora or other written and spoken material, which covers several years of matter. When having a closer look at pronouns in general it is obvious that the “basic structure has remained remarkably stable over the late modern English period” (Mair, 2006, p. 140) but this is not unexpected as grammar has undergone a radical restructuring in the late Old English and early Middle English period. There happens to be the decline of the inflectional system. After this development the nominal grammar of English had reached a stable state. In earlier times English was a more synthetic language as it was heavily influenced by Latin and afterwards French, both rather synthetic languages. Incidents like who and whom, where whom forms the object form of who are nowadays remnants of a synthetic language, which have “to sit uneasily in the new radically analytical grammar of Modern English”. (Mair, 2006, p. 141) In consequence, they “got obvious focal points for synchronic variation and diachronic change.” (Mair, 2006, p. 141) As presented in this quote who and whom obviously have to undergo a certain change since then, which is demonstrated in diverse literature.

Demise of whom?

The general opinion on whom is that "it is [already] virtually dead" (Aarts, 2004, p. 71) and will sooner or later disappear as it is just a relic of older times and therefore will die out.

"Nearly half a century ago Edward Sapir predicted the demise of whom, showing at great length that it was doomed because it was 'psychologically isolated' from the objective pronouns me, us, him, her, them on the one hand, and the invariables which, what, that and where, when, how, why on the other." (Potter, 1975², p. 151)

This opinion cannot be proved so far; "prescriptivists even continue to defend this form as the only 'correct' one in functions other than the subject." (Aarts, 2004, p. 71) The only thing which can really be stated is a "fluctuation or even a convergence between the two major regional standards, rather than a directed diachronic change." (Mair, 2006, p. 142) Therefore, whom cannot be denoted as a rare word in the English grammar. Rather it has to be said that whom is often used in interrogative sentences, when it follows a preposition. There are still two totally common ways of expressing something. "To whom did you give it? Who did you give it to?" (Potter, 1975², p. 152) Moreover, in relative clauses whom has to be used when there are "no end preposition alternatives." (Potter, 1975², p. 152) Even though whom is still used and sometimes has to be applied in certain expressions, there is a change in the appropriate use of whom. One has the impression that whom is used a lot more rarely nowadays. It seems there has been a certain movement concerning another part of English linguistics: the difference in use between written and spoken on the one and formal and informal English on the other hand. When comparing the two following examples on interrogative whom following a preposition, can be detected that the first incidence is more formal than the second one in which who is used. "To whom are you speaking?" "Who are you speaking to?" (Brinten & Arnovick, 2006, p. 440) As already mentioned

"whom is moribund as an element of the core grammar of English, but is very much alive as a style marker whose correct use is acquired in the educational system [, where it is taught]. [The use of whom] is highly restricted, but rather than disappear entirely, the form is likely to remain in use for some time to come because of its over prestige in writing." (Mair, 2006, pp. 143, 144)

"Another point to note is that in all these circumstances the decline of interrogative whom is more advanced than the decline of relative whom, which may be related to the issue of the degree of complexity of sentences." (Yoko & Michiko, 2009, p. 189)

Another event which often occurs if who and whom are applied is hypercorrection. That means that certain grammar rules, for instance the use of whom as a referent for the object, spread to other parts of English grammar, although they are not correct but are applied because of the desire to sound correct, educated and more formal. As there are many possible variations in the use of who and whom, confusion arises among speakers "about the use of subject and object forms and hence mistakes due to hypercorrection happen". "Whom do you think you are?" (Brinten & Arnovick, 2006, p. 440) is a perfect incidence of hypercorrection, as whom is used as a subject form and therefore is wrong in that case and should be replaced by a grammatically correct who.

References

Bibliography

• Glenn, Loretta; Gray (2007). The Writer's Harbrace Handbook, Brief. Cengage Learning. p. 339. ISBN 1413030602. http://books.google.com/books?id=65YhK04lMMEC. Retrieved 3 November 2010. 

• Jespersen, Otto (1965) [1924]. The Philosophy of Grammar. New York City: Norton. appendix. ISBN 0226398811. 

• Brinten, L.; Arnovick (2009). The English Language: A Linguistic History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

• Mair, C. (2009). Twentieth-Century English: History, Variation, and Standardization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521832195. 

• Potter, S. (1975). Changing English. London: The Trinity Press. ISBN 023396648X. 

• Arts, F. (2004). "Relative Who And Whom: Prescriptive Rules And Linguistic Reality". American Speech 69: 71–79. 

• Yoko, I.; Y. Michiko (2009). "Relative and Interrogative Who/Whom in Contemporary Professional American English". Germanic Languages and Linguistic Universals pages=177–191. 

• Lasnik, Howard; Nicholas Sobin (2000). "The who/whom puzzle: On the preservation of an archaic feature". Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 18 (2): 343–371. doi:10.1023/A:1006322600501. 

• Safire, William (7 October 1990). "On Language; Shnorring the Burden". The New York Times Magazine. http://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/07/magazine/on-language-shnorring-the-burden.html. Retrieved 15 June 2009. 

• Wanner, Eric; Michael Maratsos (1978). "An ATN approach to Comprehension". In Halle, M.; Bresnan, J.; Miller, G.. Linguistic theory and psychological reality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. p. 133. ISBN 9780262580434.