And in my haste to reply (sans coffee, no less), I forgot to follow my own advice... The question above should be "Whom did you see?" and not "Who did you see?". For the same reason that "You saw him" is grammatical and "You saw he" is not (i.e., the verb "to see" is transitive, and "him"/"whom" are its direct objects).
No, that rule will not always work. Some verbs assign the nominative case, prepositions always assign the objective case, and word order can be flipped around for special emphasis.
Example:
Correct: I am awake.
Incorrect: *Am me awake? ("me" comes after verb)
[the verb "to be" requires nominitave compliments]
Q: Who did you see?
Correct: Him I saw! (emphasis on "him"; both pronouns come before the verb)
Incorrect: He I saw!
[the unemphasized, unflipped phrase is: I saw him.]
Correct: Without her we are lost.
Incorrect: Without she we are lost.
["her" is the object of the preposition "without"; both pronouns come before the verb].
I'm the author of the blog entry that was linked to. I don't fully understand the argument at hand, but if the question is whether "A more cynical person than I might suggest that there is a connection between the two" is grammatical, then the answer is yes.
"Than" sets up a comparison, and the verb "to be" requires that both pronouns have the same case (i.e., nominative).
It is incorrect to say "A more cynical person than me (am)..."("I" is nominative and "him" is objective).
Now, it is worth pointing out that "A more cynical person than me" is perfectly grammatical in everyday usage. In formal writing, however, someone will surely point out the case disagreement. Language is always changing, and eventually the case disagreement will seem less important (which is why it already works in informal speech).
As for the ordering of my examples, I listed all the nominative examples first, and the objective ones last.
Slashdot Mirror
And in my haste to reply (sans coffee, no less), I forgot to follow my own advice... The question above should be "Whom did you see?" and not "Who did you see?". For the same reason that "You saw him" is grammatical and "You saw he" is not (i.e., the verb "to see" is transitive, and "him"/"whom" are its direct objects).
cheers, t.
No, that rule will not always work. Some verbs assign the nominative case, prepositions always assign the objective case, and word order can be flipped around for special emphasis.
Example:
Correct: I am awake.
Incorrect: *Am me awake? ("me" comes after verb)
[the verb "to be" requires nominitave compliments]
Q: Who did you see?
Correct: Him I saw! (emphasis on "him"; both pronouns come before the verb)
Incorrect: He I saw!
[the unemphasized, unflipped phrase is: I saw him.]
Correct: Without her we are lost.
Incorrect: Without she we are lost.
["her" is the object of the preposition "without"; both pronouns come before the verb].
Sorry, a part of my explanation is amiss... I copied/pasted the wrong tidbits.
Correction: It is incorrect to say "A more cynical person than me (am)..."("A person" is nominative and "me" is objective).
I'm the author of the blog entry that was linked to. I don't fully understand the argument at hand, but if the question is whether "A more cynical person than I might suggest that there is a connection between the two" is grammatical, then the answer is yes.
"Than" sets up a comparison, and the verb "to be" requires that both pronouns have the same case (i.e., nominative).
It is incorrect to say "A more cynical person than me (am)..."("I" is nominative and "him" is objective).
Now, it is worth pointing out that "A more cynical person than me" is perfectly grammatical in everyday usage. In formal writing, however, someone will surely point out the case disagreement. Language is always changing, and eventually the case disagreement will seem less important (which is why it already works in informal speech).
As for the ordering of my examples, I listed all the nominative examples first, and the objective ones last.