To whom/whom

Hello people

I came across to an idea I had been too much stuck to the Chomskians' interpretation of the SVOO structure. I got another explanation to the question: why the wh-question of 'She gave him the book) in current English) must be 'To who(m) did you give the book?'. It would be simply because now English people have not two kinds of objective word corresponding to the subjective 'who' in spite of the fact that they still retain the Germanic SVOO structure: one object is dative and another is accusative. In German they have two 'whom's. The one is the dative 'Wem' and the other is the accusative 'Wen'. They use them distinctively like this way: "Wem hast du geholfen?" (Whom did you help?) and "Wen hast du gesehen?" (Whom did you see?). Old English had also two words corresponding to hwa(who): dative 'hwam' and accusative 'hwane'. But through the time of hybridization with Scandinavian languages, the distinction between 'hwam' and 'hwane' had disappeared and they were together simplified into 'whom' that has no case indicator though it can be recognized as the objective of 'who'. In English, you don't have to distinguish the dative case and the accusative case in most sentences except those of the SVOO structure. Maybe you don't feel the difference between the two 'him's in "I helped him" and "I saw him". But in German the former 'him' is dative and the latter is accusative. I guess you don't feel any inconvenience even if you can't feel such a difference. But I think the people at the time of Middle English might feel some inconvenience when they wanted to make a wh-sentence for such a predicate sentence of the SVOO structure like "The king gave his daughter the warrior" where one of the two objects is dative and the other is accusative. With only one 'whom' people couldn't have helped constructing such sentences as "Whom did the king give his daughter?" and "Whom did the king give the warrior?" There is no syntactic difference so that with them the people must have been puzzled: who is the gift and who is the recipient? Here, the Middle English people, I guess, gradually established a new grammar rule to distinguish the dative 'whom' and the accusative 'whom'. The rule is: use 'to whom' instead of a simple 'whom' when questioning the dative object as far as a sentence of the SVOO structure concerns.

It is my guess work. What do you think about it? I'm afraid you cannot take what I mean because my English skill is so poor. But it is nice if anyone here gives me any comment.

paco

Mr P

I think one reason why you hate 'whom' as an interrogative word even it works syntactically as an objective might be that you native speakers got during your childhood a firm linguistic sense that any sentence must be headed by some subjective word. I think it is why you prefer 'who' to 'whom' especially in speaking.

paco

Re: The reason we (Americans, anyway) hate "whom".

There's a sociological component to it. Americans are fiercely egalitarian and, perhaps more to the point, anti-intellectual, and they resent being made to feel inferior as much as they feel guilty about appearing too intelligent.

In short, those who use "whom" and "shall" are almost universally regarded snobs, wimps, or sissies, or, heaven forbid, British! England is still regarded in the popular mind as the land of class distinctions and the only place where English is spoken "correctly".


Whether these factors outweigh considerations of syntax is an open question.

CJ

With a little tweaking:

There's a sociological component to it. Britons are sulkily egalitarian and, perhaps more to the point, anti-intellectual, and they resent being made to feel inferior as much as they feel horribly embarrassed about appearing too intelligent. In short, those who use "whom" and "shall" are almost universally regarded as snobs, wimps, or sissies, or, heaven forbid, foreign! England is still the land of class distinction, to everyone's secret relief, and firmly believed to be the only place where English is spoken "correctly".

MrP

Hello paco,

(1) I met him yesterday. (2) I gave him a book. I was taught in school that the two 'him's (him and him) are completely equal grammatically (syntactically) as well as semantically.

Well, they're the same semantically. Both and are the GOAL. You should look into semantic roles.

. . . , but as to him, I guess you must take it as a new possessor of the book as well as the object of the verb 'gave'. This would be the reason why you tend to get disinclined to construct a wh-question sentence like "Whom did you give the book?".

No, not really. The verb 'gave' implies he has the book. With any other distransitive, I doubt you'd get a possessor reading.

"?Who(m) did you make read the book?". This is very interesting. No grammar books say expliciltly this construct is ungrammatical. But actullay it seems you native speakers rarely use this structure. I confirmed it through Google surveys.

Yes, it's 'rarely' used, and the reason for the symbol (?). It's questionable, which isn't to say it's ungrammatical or unacceptable.

Note, the underlined word is unnecessary.

P.S. Does "paco" stand for paa'so'con (Japanese for personal computer)?