Relative Who and Whom

Prescriptive Rules and Linguistic Reality

Dados Bibliográficos

ID8729964
AutoresFlor Aarts (autor correspondente)
Ano1994
Volume69
Fascículo1
Páginas71-71
Data de publicação1994-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoAmerican Speech (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0003-1283 • E-ISSN: 1527-2133
EditoraJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/455950
OpenAlexW2315189014
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas4
Referências citadas4

RULES FOR THE CORRECT USE of relative who and whom are to be found in almost every book on English usage. Their origin can be traced back to the prescriptive grammars of the eighteenth century. Since then, who has gained a great deal of ground at the expense of whom, particularly in spoken and informal English. Although some grammarians claim that whom is virtually dead, prescriptivists continue to defend this form as the only 'correct' one in functions other than the subject. Prescriptivist teaching has ensured that most educated speakers of English are aware of the existence of rules for the use of relative who and whom in specific syntactic contexts. The trouble is that they are not always sure what these contexts are. This leads to insecurity, which, in turn, leads to sentences which violate the prescriptive rules. This paper shows that who/whom usage has been strongly influenced by prescriptive precepts. It provides evidence from spoken English to show that there is obviously a clash in this area of English grammar between what people actually say and what prescriptivists believe they ought to say. Finally, it compares data from spoken English with data from two corpora of written English to demonstrate that the use of relative whom is primarily restricted to formal style. The incorrect use of relative who and whom has a long history in

English grammar · Frequency · Grammar · Linguistics · Style (visual arts · Subject (documents · Computer Science · Gender Studies in Language · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Mathematics · Multilingual Education and Policy · History · Philosophy