Friday, August 27: Bandersnatches
OBJECT POVERTY
by Steven Steinbock
I can’t really blame anyone for dropping the Ms of the end of whom. I may get a momentary sense of unease. But then I remind myself that there are bigger fish to fry. Besides, whom has fallen so far into disuse that when I speak a sentence that calls for it I find myself pausing to double check. Real-time oral proofreading is no way to carry a conversation.
Perfectly good patterns do sometimes fall into disuse. I think it’s a shame that the Second-Person Plural pronoun ye has disappeared from English. Ironically, it’s only in the Southern states of the US that ye can still hear a plural second-person in the form of you all or the contraction y’all. What makes it ironic is that American not living in Southern states generally look down their noses at the form, thinking it the sign of poor education, when it is, in fact, a smarter use of pronouns than what the rest of us use.
I’ve noticed an interesting pattern in which object pronouns are misused. There’s probably a name for it, and perhaps some grammarian reading this will kindly provide it. But I’m stuck just trying to describe it. Here it is: we sometimes choose pronouns based on their location in a sentence or clause rather than on its function. I’m sure I’m guilty of it.
Here’s how it works: we are so accustomed to the pattern SUBJECT VERB OBJECT (“he kissed her” “she slapped him” “we ignored them” etc.) that we mistakenly assume that any pronoun near the end of a sentence ought to take the object form.
I’m reading a light thriller written in the early 1940s, They Tell No Tales by Manning Coles. (It’s an excellent book from a wonderful series, by the way). I came across a phrase that felt awkward. But after reading it a few times, I realized that it was correct, and that I was just unaccustomed to it.
To set up the stage, the hero, Hambledon, is talking with his friend and a policeman about a man they suspect of being a spy, but who has covered his tracks so well that they can’t prove it.
“It’s a pity,” agreed Elliot, “but he gets away with it this time, if it was he.”
It was the last word in that passage that derailed me. If it was he. It would seem (to me, anyway) that the phrase would read if it was him. My guess is that most of us would, without giving it a second thought, use him rather than he. But then most of us (including me) would be wrong. The he in question is the subject of Elliot and Hambledon’s suspicion, not the object. But because the pronoun is the final word in the sentence, or perhaps because it comes at the end of an if clause, we instinctively think it should be the object.
But that brings up another question: should the verb in that passage have been was or were? I thought that in the subjunctive mood, we should always use the verb were no matter who the person is. Would “if it were he” have been more correct?
Now I’ve completely confused myself.
If any readers can enlighten me as to the history of the subjunctive were rule, or if you’d like to share any odd or awkward verbal patterns, jump right in.
The he in question is the subject of Elliot and Hambledon’s suspicion, not the object.
That can’t be quite right, Steve: The grammatical subject of “if it was he” is “it”, just as in “it is raining”.
As to the question of the subjunctive, it seems to me the indicative “was” is appropriate in the example, because Elliot does not consider it false or unlikely that it was, indeed, he who committed this act.
Consider these scenarios:
Hambledon and Elliot find a handkerchief with the initials P.M. at the scene of the crime. The suspect’s name is Peter Muller.
Hambledon: “If Muller killed him, he left a pretty obvious clue behind.”
(Indicative “killed”, because Hambledon considers it entirely possible that Muller did indeed commit the murder.)
Elliot (who knows Muller was in jail at the time of the murder): “If Muller had killed him, he wouldn’t have left such an obvious clue.”
(Subjunctive, because Elliot considers it false, indeed impossible, that Muller committed the murder.)
Grammar is perhaps the most underrated fun activity in the world. What a shame…
I love this stuff, Rob. I could never be considered a grammarian (I’ve probably never in my entire life used the word “whom” in a conversation) but I find all this — as Hamilton said — great fun.
Congrats to Hamilton as well for his analysis of was/were.
Sorry — Make that Steve, not Rob. It just occurred to me that Rob and JLW probably ARE our grammarians . . .
Hamilton, I apologize. It’s pretty clear that I confused myself more than I clarified anything. But I had fun doing it.
John, while I try to understand and respect the rules of grammar, they often go over my head like calculus. It should be noted that JLW has written several good columns on the very issues I tried to address. He makes a case for cases here, and provides a handy table of them here. Then he did a two-parter on mood here and
here.
I am NOT a grammarian, John. I fly by the seat of my pants in that area. Don’t need no stinkin’ grammar.
On the other hand my wife has a t shirt that says “I am the grammarian about whom your mother warned you.”
Steve, I’m glad you brought up the WERE issue, because that’s what bothered me.
What bothers me is–I mean, what bother me are errors that become ingrained because of efforts to correct other errors. Best example would be the phrase “give the job to Sam and I.” A lot of people (maybe most) would say that, though they would never say “give the job to I.” As for the tendency to put an objective form at the end of a sentence, people of my elderly generation were taught to say “She is taller than I,” because a logical continuation of the sentence would be “than I am tall.” However, it’s my experience lately that almost no one would write it that way, let alone say it that way. In narrative, not dialogue, good writers use that objective form all the time, and interestingly I find it even more ingrained in British writers than American. The British also seem less bothered about a phrase like “everyone has a write to their opinion,” while at least some Americans would still want to make it either “his or her opinion” or rephrase it “All are entitled to their opinions.” Yes, I love this stuff, too.
Great article.
In the sentence was is the assumption concerning something thought to be true…i.e. he got away with something….again. Pretty sure this was the guy.
Were would imply still not sure…
Ye raised some good questions and I don’t know the answer, just the ticklings of what I was taught oh so many years ago.
I think I’ll ask my son who is a Latin and Applied Linguistics instructor. I’m curious now.
Thank ye again.
I always thought “their” was another, grammatically correct way of saying “his or her.” Am I wrong?
Example:
Somebody has left their book on the desk.
Which sounds to me better than “Somebody has left his or her book on the desk,” which sounds awkward and clumsy to my ears. What does everybody think?
I grew up in Georgia and my grandfather often used ye in his speech. He also used ya’ll (we all did)for the plural. We also used to be fixin’ to do something, as opposed to getting ready to do it, and reckoned rather than guessed.
Todo, you bring up a good question about the generic “their.” I don’t know the definitive answer, assuming there is one. Jon’s comment suggests that it’s accepted, but less so in the States.
David, “reckon” is a nice verb. I’ve never been one to use it, but I like it. I assume it’s much older than “guess” since it shows up in British speech quite a bit.
I reckon that natives of the original 13 colonies have retained some British speech elements that the rest of the US has lost. (A person’s pronunciation of “aunt” is usually a good indicator of whether or not they were born in one of the 13 colony states).
The use of the plural possessive pronoun (“their”) as a singular to show gender neutrality is not grammatically correct, but it is a well-established English idiom that goes back to at least the late 18th c. Jane Austen and Walter Scott both used it. Technically, the “proper” gender neutral possessive pronoun should be “its”, but that is not acceptable in English, since applying “it” to a person is considered deprecating.
Personally, I don’t like using “their” as a gender neutral pronoun. I prefer simply to use “his”, which in an indeterminate context was once gender neutral, but is now frowned upon as being sexist. “His” and “her” actually derive from the same root, the Anglo-Saxon he-, after all. (Before the word “she” was adopted in Old English, the feminine nominative pronoun was “heo”.)
Deconstructivists and dedicated feminist linguisticians aside, there is nothing political about gender in grammar. It is about the most arbitrary thing there is in language.
Regarding the predicative nominative pronoun, i.e. using “I” or “he” (or “she”) in the predicate of a clause, this is an English idiom, derived from Latin grammar, and hence not necessarily subject to strict logic. It is definitely dying out. There are two types.
One, as Jon notes, is following a conjunctive particle (than, as, or, nor, etc.) used after a comparative adjective or adverb, which may imply a new clause, as in “better you than I”, “neither you nor I”, or “not as well-read as I”. The second is in the predicate of a copula: “This is I”, “it was he.” Most languages use an objective form of the pronoun, e.g. “This is I” translates to “C’est moi” in French.
Hamilton’s remarks about conditionals having both indicative and subjunctive forms is absolutely right, and his comment about the indicative being less remote in terms of its likely truth that the subjunctive is accurate, but I would add that a statement in the conditional indicative indicates an unknown or undetermined fact:
Q: “Was that drunken phone call I got last night pretending to be an emergency from you?”
A: “If it was, I don’t remember.”
whereas the subjunctive represents a potential:
Q: “Do you suppose the phone call I got last night was a drunken prank and not an actual emergency?”
A: “If it were, you would probably know by now.”
There is absolutely nothing more idiomatic in language than mood. Hamilton, by the way, is an expert on the subject of logical modality, the mathematical equivalent of grammatical mood.
Finally, the were-subjunctive is itself really very simple. Any use of the verb “to be” can be made subjunctive by simply replacing the indicative form (is, am, was, are, etc.) with were.
It is closely related to the be-subjunctive (e.g., albeit, howbeit, “If music be the food of love, play on!”, etc.), but more remote by virtue of the past tense form.
Winston Churchill: “This is the kind of arrant pedantry up with which I shall not put.”
My gripe is using “you and I” in cases where they are not in the nominative, as in “They know better than to suspect that behavior in you and I”
Steve: No need to apologize. If anyone should, it is I.
Jon: Comparatives like your example “taller than” are very interesting both logically and grammatically. Intriguingly, there seems to be a significant difference between “I wish I were taller than my brother” and “I wish I were taller than my brother is”. Perhaps even more obvious: “I wish I were taller than me/myself” (seems unreasonable) versus “I wish I were taller than I am” (true).
James: Excellent points. I couldn’t agree more about the silliness of politicizing grammatical gender. Btw: German grammar, interestingly, doesn’t allow the “It’s me/I” or “C’est moi” construction; all you can say is “Ich bin’s” (=”I am it”), where the first person pronoun is explicitly put in subject position (similarly with third person, as in Steve’s original example: “wenn er es war” = “if he was it”).
Something that’s always confused me is the lack of agreement between subject and verb in constructions like “It is me/I who has eaten the cake.” Since the subject of the subordinate clause is, logically speaking, first person, one should expect “who have eaten the cake.” German is no better than English in this regard, but French is: “C’est moi qui ai mangé le gateau.” (I hope the acute accent comes out right…)
Back to work…
Something that’s always confused me is the lack of agreement between subject and verb in constructions like “It is me/I who has eaten the cake.”
That’s because such constructions are grammatically wrong. The verb should always agree with the subject. One of the things that drives me nuts these days is the omnipresence of making the verb agree with an plural adjectival instead of the singular subject, e.g., “An example of different grammatical errors are verb/subject disagreement, misuse of the predicative nominative, and the plural possessive pronoun used in the singular.” This abomination is particularly virulent on TV.
When I wrote my earlier comment, I remember thinking there’ll be some stupid error in it that someone will catch. Though nobody was so unkind as to mention it, I will: everyone has a RIGHT (not WRITE) to his/her or their or its opinion.
All I can say is I had to read the post and the comments three times.
Like Jon Breen, I learned “she is taller than I am tall.”
Terrie
Thanks, James! Very informative.
Hamilton: As to German being no better than English in this regard, yes, you are probably right! I am just realizing how similiar English and German can be, at least when it comes to grammar.
This is I (or me). = Das bin ich. (instead of \”mich\” = me)
It is I (or me) who has eaten the cake. = Ich bin der, der den Kuchen gegessen hat. (instead of \”habe\” = have)
Also, does anybody actually say \”That is I\” or \”This is I\” in conversation? Sounds to me incredibly clumsy and somehow pompous.
She: Who is the hot guy in this picture?
He: Oh, that\’s I.
She: *rolls eyes*
OR
She: Who is the hot guy in this picture?
He: Oh, that\’s me.
She: Oh, I thought it was you! *bats eyelashes at him*
Sounds to me incredibly clumsy and somehow pompous.
Only because you are unaccustomed to it, although I can’t think of any circumstances where one would say “That is I” — “That’s me” is an idiom used when describing some quality attribute to one’s self, as in, “Grammar cop: that’s me!” But you’ll observe that Isaac Asimov always used the predicative nominative, and it doesn’t seem to have made his stuff less readable.
(A person’s pronunciation of “aunt” is usually a good indicator of whether or not they were born in one of the 13 colony states).
Above, the error is the generic “he”: It should read, ” person’s pronunciation of ‘aunt’ is usually a good indicator of whether or not “he was” born in one of the 13 “colonial” states.”
Although if one “go” back to Chaucer’s days (yes, “go” because technically it needs a present subjunctive form here), “he” will see that “singular they” was used even in that day and even by Chaucer, himself. The old, technical rule is to use the masculine pronoun as a gender neutral pronoun (he, his, him, himself) and the feminine rule applies to things only a woman would most likely do. For example:
“If anyone should move, I’ll blow ‘his’ head off.” (very likely to be a man)
“Every nanny should know ‘her’ place.” (very likely that a nanny may be a woman as opposed to a man.)
As for “whom”, I use it in conversation, but usually as a relative pronoun as in, “It is I whom you are talking to.” Normally, the only time I shall use it as an interrogative pronoun is when I ask, “to whom” or “from whom”. Again, I’m pretty liberal on the “whom”, but, in writing, it is the mark of the educated speaker. It’s wrong in text to write, “These are the people who(m) you asked for.” Some people may argue that that sentence shouldn’t end with a preposition, but that’s a pseudo rule derived from Latin and not true.
Now for the predicate nominative, “It is I”. Okay, this is an old rule, some say it is derived from Latin, but, really, it comes from the Middle English inversion, “It am I”, which means, “I am it”. Back in the day, these statements were inverted. When grammar was streamlined in the 17th century, they normalized subject-verb agreement here so “It am I” became “It is I” to agree with the subject “it”.
When one talks about stuff like, “He is taller than ‘me'”, and mentioning the French use of “moi” in a sentence like this and “C’est moi”, this is called a disjunctive pronoun or case and English grammar frowns upon disjunctives for whatever reason. The only examples of disjunctives I can think of in English that would not be frowned on are encased in sentences like, “Who? Me?” or “Me, I’m smart”, wherein the use of the disjunctive pronoun has a rhetorical effect. The French have a disjunctive pronoun case, which differs from the accusative. It also has a dative case pronoun. In English, the accusative, dative, and disjunctive all look like the objective pronoun (me, him, her, them, us, etc.).
I agree with the subjunctive argument so I’m not going there really except for this: In older English, we would see examples like this:
“If he were President, he would cut taxes.”
“If he be President, he will cut taxes.”
Here, one uses the past subjunctive “were” to talk about something contrary-to-fact and the present subjunctive “be” to talk about an unknown possibility. This is an old rule that can be seen in cases like “if truth be told” or “whether it be”, but many don’t hearken to this rule anymore. Here’s another example of present subjunctive:
“It is important that he ‘do’ his own work.”
Now for this:(“he kissed her” “she slapped him” “we ignored them” etc.) The pronouns here at the end are transitive objective pronouns known as the accusative pronoun or case.
English used to differentiate between the accusative, dative, and instrumental cases back in the days of Chaucer, but that is no longer true. The declension has fallen apart and now we have an objective case. Again, in English, we call it the objective case, but, in French, a person couldn’t refer to it as the objective case because there are multiple objective pronouns that differ depending upon where the object may be located in the sentence.
Personally, speaking of grammar, I dislike it when people say pseudo past tenses/participles like, “snuck, brang, brung, thunk, boughten, drug, sended, etc.”. I’ve come to accept “dove” as a variant past tense to “dived”, but “dived” must be used as the past participle. I despise “snuck” to “sneaked”. It sounds very uneducated. That’s just my opinion. Oh well, it’s grammar.
“It is I who ‘has’ eaten the cake.”
Okay, I had forgotten to mention this. It should read, “It is I who ‘have’ eaten the cake” because the verb must always agree with the predicate nominative form; thus we would see then, “It is he who ‘has’ eaten the cake”. This goes for examples like this, which are commonly confused:
“He is just one of many people who ‘are’ here.”
Above, we see that the sentence talks about a “one”, but we use are after the relative pronoun “who” because it refers to the “many people”; thus “many people are here”.
“One of the things that drives me nuts these days…”
It should be, “One of the things that DRIVE me nuts these days…” because the “that” replaces “things” rather than “One”.
Oops. You’re right.
(Florid bow.) I stand corrected.
The verb that agrees with “One” actually appears later in the sentence: “One of the things that drives [sic] me nuts these days is the omnipresence of making the verb agree with an plural adjectival instead of the singular subject . . .”
Thanks for catching it. I love this stuff.
I’m talking about the relative clause “that DRIVE me nuts these days…” wherein you put DRIVES. DRIVES is the wrong verb because it’s singular, but the relative clause acts as an adjective for the noun “things”, which is plural. It has nothing to do with “ONE”.
I accept your gracious bow lol. I like the discussion here, too. Sorry I couldn’t have been involved in it back in August.
Whoever wrote this article should do another newer piece on grammar. I think one on fake or nonstandard past tenses and participles would suffice. That’s a really big pet peeve of mine. I hate the word “snuck”. It’s not proper and shows a man with a limited mind.
Furthermore, there are more important grammatical rules that we could discuss like Ebonics or even more on “ye/thou”, which was briefly mentioned above. Perhaps, we could discuss the above stuff even more. Who knows?
You people remind me of the cast from Quantum Leap lol.