Search results for 'tag:Relative pronouns tag:Whom' matching tags 'Relative pronouns' and 'Whom'

Re: Whom or Who?

jazzmaster — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 03:41:45 GMT

CalifJim
You need who. They wish that their children (subject of clause) would grow up ...
who is the subject form, not whom.
... of their children who (they wish) would grow up ...
CJ

Thanks CJ.
I thought about that. But I figured otherwise: "they (the parents) wish that their children would grow up" -> "the parents wish that the children (object of the clause) would grow up".

I pulled a couple of sentences from a dictionary:

1. The man whom you just met is a detective.
2. I received a gift from a girl whom I thought did not like me.

So they take "whom" because the relative pronoun must refer to the object of 1. you met, 2. I thought did not like me, which are "the man" and "a girl" respectively. Therefore object form "whom" is more suitable than subject form "who".

Man, these are hard to explain with words ...

jm

Whom or Who?

jazzmaster — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 02:24:10 GMT

I need your opinion on the usage of the relative pronoun "whom" in this sentence.

Or should it be "who" instead? Is this sentence correct in general? :

Parents are feeling responsible for the bad behaviors of their children whom they wish would grow up for the better later.

(The pronoun "they" right after "whom" of course refers to "the parents".)

Thanks for your input.

Re: The difference between 'who' and 'whom'

CalifJim — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 01:54:52 GMT

Anonymous
I donât like the boy to whom you are talking
I donât like the boy who you are talking to

They are both correct, right?

Yes. They are both correct.

Anonymous
I think "I don't like the boy who you are talking to" is incorrect.

Sorry. You think wrong. You can always use who instead of whom when you leave the preposition 'stranded' at the end. Use whom for very formal contexts.

It would be quite idiomatic to leave out the relative pronoun completely, thus avoiding the use of whom:

I don't like the boy you're talking to.

Re: Two relative pronouns in the sentence

CalifJim — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 15:57:49 GMT

Surely you can invent one of your own choosing! Make a sentence like the one the original poster submitted, extending it with another relative clause. He's already got who and that. Add which somewhere. Maybe you can even get a whom or a where in your sentence, too!

Re: relative clause

26TMNTJG2PG — Fri, 16 May 2008 09:43:04 GMT

1. The name of the man who Tom called uncle is Bobby Brown.
If you rewrite "man who (subjective case) Tom called uncle", it becomes "Tom called he (subjective case) uncle". It should be "Tom called him (objective case) uncle" from the choice "man whom"; but there is no such choice.

Therefore, A is not correct. (For a simple guideline for the use of "who"/"whom", kindly refer to "Who" or "Whom" (relative pronouns).

2. Jonny is the only __ I know in the meeting.
(A) cannot be used as per the above explanation but (B) is correct to some as "that" for human is a disputed usage. (For a little bit more on "that", you can read The relative pronoun - that.

Regards.

Re: The difference between 'who' and 'whom'

26TMNTJG2PG — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 10:01:29 GMT

I just joined this Forum a few days ago. I do not know what I going to tell you is still relevant.

I have come across an article "Who" or "Whom" (relative pronouns), careful perusal and digestion of which may be of great help.

Re: Is it a subject relative?

miriam — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 05:02:36 GMT

Hello.

Relative clauses can only be (from a syntactic point of view) either post-modifiers of nouns/pronouns, or sentence modifiers. They are never objects; they don't modify verbs.

What can be subjects or objects, WITHIN the relative clauses themselves, are the relative pronouns used (who, that, which, etc.).

You provided the following examples: "The girl laughed at the boy who is bigger than her" and "The boy hit the girl who slept".

Both sentences could use some changes, but I will concentrate on what you're asking only.

In the first sentence, "who is bigger than her" is a restrictive relative clause acting as post-modifier of the noun "boy". The relative pronoun "who" is the subject of the relative clause.

Your second sentence is another example of the relative pronoun as subject of the relative clause. The clause is "who slept", with "who" as its subject.

Here are a couple of examples of relative clauses in which the relative pronoun acts as object:

1. "Where is the flower-pot (that I gave you last month)?" [that = direct object] (the subject of the clause is "I")

2. "The books (that are on the table) are Paul's." [that = subject (the books)]

3. "You don't know the man (to whom my sister sold her car)." [to whom = indirect object] (the subject of the clause is "my sister")

There are also cases in which the relative pronoun is preceded by a preposition but you're not in the presence of an indirect object. In such cases, what you'll have is an adjunct (or adverbial), as in the following sentence:

4. "Chemistry is a subject which I've always had problems with." [here, "with which" is neither subject nor object, but an adjunct/adverbial]

You can remove "which" (though not the preposition) from sentence #4, and the sentence will still make sense: "Chemistry is a subject I've always had problems with".

One good way of telling whether the relative pronoun is acting as object (direct or indirect) or subject in the relative clause is trying to remove the pronoun in question from the clause. If you do, and the sentence still makes sense, that will most probably mean that the relative pronoun is the object of the clause (watch out for adjuncts, though). If you can't remove the pronoun, that will mean it's the subject (of the relative clause). Have a look at my examples and give this a try. You won't have a correct sentence in #2 if you remove the relative proboun, but you can certainly remove it in the other three examples. You'll have to make a minor change in sentence #3, though.

See if you can do it and what you come up with.

I hope this helps.

Miriam.

Re: which/that/who

Newguest — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 22:01:09 GMT

Kooyeen

1 - I don't think you can use "what", and for some reason I don't like "which". Also, I think that "everything" should be written separately, "every thing".
2 - You can leave it out. I don't know if it's used as a relative pronoun or a conjunction, though.
3 - With the comma "which" is ok, but not "that". If you use "that" without the comma, you get a restrictive relative clause that refers to the jackets and specifies what kinds of jackets those were: jackets that didn't fit him.
4 - If you use the commas you need to add "who". With no commas you can leave it out.

EDIT: I hadn't seen CB's post. I just read it and I think I don't agree on this:

3. The sentence is fine with that provided you leave out the comma and Martin tried on at least four jackets in all. If you use a comma, only which is possible and in that case Martin tried on a total of three jackets, none of which fitted him.

4. Your sentence with commas is wrong. If only two men came into the office and you had seen neither one before, write:

Two men, who/whom I had never seen before, came into the office.

If more than two men came and you hadn't seen two of them before, write:

Two men [who/whom/that] I had never seen before came into the office

I don't think the number of jackets or men is important when considering relative clauses.

I think this would be impossible to distinguish the difference when speaking not writing.

If I said: Two men who I had never seen before came into the office, who would know if I used the comma or not and how to interpret it?

So in your opinion Kooyeen I can write: Two men I had never seen before came into the office.

Re: which/that/who

Kooyeen — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 21:35:12 GMT

Newguest
1. Everything that happened was my fault. Can I also say: Everything what/which happened was my fault.
2. The last time (that) I saw her, she looked fine. Is the word "that" the object of this sentence so we can omit it?
3. Martin tried on three jackets, which didn't fit him. Can I also write:..that didn't fit him. Do you think it is a non-restricitive relative clause?
4. Two men, I had never seen before, came into the office. Is it also OK to write: Two man, whom/who/th

1 - I don't think you can use "what", and for some reason I don't like "which". Also, I think that "everything" should be written separately, "every thing".
2 - You can leave it out. I don't know if it's used as a relative pronoun or a conjunction, though.
3 - With the comma "which" is ok, but not "that". If you use "that" without the comma, you get a restrictive relative clause that refers to the jackets and specifies what kinds of jackets those were: jackets that didn't fit him.
4 - If you use the commas you need to add "who". With no commas you can leave it out.

EDIT: I hadn't seen CB's post. I just read it and I think I don't agree on this:

3. The sentence is fine with that provided you leave out the comma and Martin tried on at least four jackets in all. If you use a comma, only which is possible and in that case Martin tried on a total of three jackets, none of which fitted him.
4. Your sentence with commas is wrong. If only two men came into the office and you had seen neither one before, write:
Two men, who/whom I had never seen before, came into the office.
If more than two men came and you hadn't seen two of them before, write:
Two men [who/whom/that] I had never seen before came into the office

I don't think the number of jackets or men is important when considering relative clauses.

Re: Proficiency alongside "poverty".

Cool Breeze — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 09:58:49 GMT

Anonymous
In that respect, I would like to know when and how the auxiliary "do" appeared in English. What kind of people introduced it into the English language?
I would like to know who decided about the value of tenses of the Past. They do not correspond to the value of the tenses of the Past in latinoÃ¯d languages. Who can give me answers ?
In this debate, I do not think there is an evolution towards simplicity nor towards more complicated structures. The
communities of native speakers of a language constantly change the rules and the meaning of words (although the main core remains more or less stable for facility reasons.)
Ethnic languages are tools of inclusion and mainly exclusion (internal and external). That is why there are so many exceptions.
No ethnic language is that easy to learn. When I say "to learn" I mean to learn it to be on equal footing with a native speaker of the language. There will always be a difference, a discrimination.
From what I have experienced ( I am very interested by languages), there is no easy language. All has been done by training.
There is no natural language : everything has been constructed by Man.
I invite the readers to learn an interlanguage such as Esperanto, compare it with your mother tongue and with languages you have studied later. 90% to 95% of the time is spent to the learning of exceptions. That is why a language without exception such as Esperanto is ten to twenty times faster to learn than ethnic languages.
It is fascinating to see how a universal congress of Esperanto works and to compare it with an international congress in only one language. Many prejudices fall.
Maybe I am opening new interests in the debate..
George/Belgium

Do existed in Old English more than a thousand years ago as a regular verb and meant to cause. It is impossible to say who introduced it to English. It's use as an auxiliary in questions and negations was established in Shakespeare's day when it was correct to say both

I know not him
and
I do not know him.

It is very common that the usage of tenses varies from language to language, especially if the languages are not closely related. No reasons can usually be given for this. You might just as well ask why the usage of tenses in the Romance languages differs from that in English. Linguistic changes are often shrouded in the past and there is no knowing why they occurred.

All words and grammatical structures people are not used to sound wrong and/or odd and therefore people usually object to changes that are about to happen in their lifetime and think the language is deteriorating. This is true about all languages, not just English. People tend to think a language is at its most beautiful right now and any change will just make it worse.

English grammar has become so simple over the centuries that I cannot envisage it becoming any simpler without the risk of English becoming even more inexact than it is now. However, not all changes have made the language simpler in structure. In Old English there was just one relative pronoun and it had only one form. That made communication with relative clauses very awkward and it wasn't a great surprise that who, whom, whose, what and which began to be used as relatives to facilitate communication.

CB