The
pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase.
Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not co ...
''who'', in
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
, is an
interrogative
An interrogative clause is a clause whose form is typically associated with question-like meanings. For instance, the English sentence "Is Hannah sick?" has interrogative syntax which distinguishes it from its declarative counterpart "Hannah is ...
pronoun and a
relative pronoun
A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause. It serves the purpose of conjoining modifying information about an antecedent referent.
An example is the word ''which'' in the sentence "This is the house which Jack built." Here the ...
, used primarily to refer to persons.
Unmarked, ''who'' is the pronoun’s subjective form; its inflected forms are the
objective
Objective may refer to:
* Objective (optics), an element in a camera or microscope
* ''The Objective'', a 2008 science fiction horror film
* Objective pronoun, a personal pronoun that is used as a grammatical object
* Objective Productions, a Brit ...
''whom'' and the
possessive
A possessive or ktetic form (abbreviated or ; from la, possessivus; grc, κτητικός, translit=ktētikós) is a word or grammatical construction used to indicate a relationship of possession in a broad sense. This can include strict owne ...
''whose''. The set has derived
indefinite forms ''whoever'', ''whomever'', and ''whoseever,'' as well as a further, earlier such set ''whosoever,'' ''whomsoever'', and ''whosesoever'' (see also "
-ever
An interrogative word or question word is a function word used to ask a question, such as ''what, which'', ''when'', ''where'', ''who, whom, whose'', ''why'', ''whether'' and ''how''. They are sometimes called wh-words, because in English most o ...
").
Etymology
The interrogative and relative pronouns ''who'' derive from the
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
singular interrogative ,
and whose paradigm is set out below:
It was not until the end of the 17th century that ''who'' became the only pronoun that could ask about the identity of persons and ''what'' fully lost this ability.
"The first occurrences of wh-relatives date from the twelfth century (with the possible exception (see Kivimaa 1966: 35)). The wh- form does not become frequent, however, until the fourteenth century." Notably,
relative ''whose'' can still today refer to non-persons (e.g., ''the car whose door won't open'').
The spelling 'who' does not correspond to the word's pronunciation ; it is the spelling that represents the expected outcome of , while the pronunciation represents a divergent outcome – for details see
Pronunciation of English ⟨wh⟩
The pronunciation of the digraph in English has changed over time, and still varies today between different regions and accents. It is now most commonly pronounced , the same as a plain initial , although some dialects, particularly those of S ...
. The word is
cognate
In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymology, etymological ancestor in a proto-language, common parent language. Because language c ...
with
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
and
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
.
Uses
As interrogative pronoun
"Who" and its derived forms can be used as
interrogative pronoun
An interrogative word or question word is a function word used to ask a question, such as ''what, which'', ''when'', ''where'', ''who, whom, whose'', ''why'', ''whether'' and ''how''. They are sometimes called wh-words, because in English most o ...
s, to form questions:
*"Who did that?"
*"Who did you meet this morning?" (formal: "Who(m) did you meet this morning?")
*"Who did you speak to?" (formal: "To whom did you speak?" or "Whom did you speak to?")
*"Whoever could have done that?" (emphatic form, expressing disbelief)
*"Whose bike is that?" (use of 'whose' as possessive determiner/adjective; see
possessive
A possessive or ktetic form (abbreviated or ; from la, possessivus; grc, κτητικός, translit=ktētikós) is a word or grammatical construction used to indicate a relationship of possession in a broad sense. This can include strict owne ...
and
English possessive
In English, possessive words or phrases exist for nouns and most pronouns, as well as some noun phrases. These can play the roles of determiners (also called possessive adjectives when corresponding to a pronoun) or of nouns.
For nouns, noun phra ...
)
*"Whose do you like best?" (use of 'whose' as possessive pronoun)
The same forms (though not usually the emphatic ones) are used to make
indirect question In grammar, a content clause is a dependent clause that provides content implied or commented upon by an independent clause. The term was coined by Danish linguist Otto Jespersen. They are also known as noun clauses.
English
In English, there are ...
s:
*"We don't know who did that."
*"I wonder who(m) she met this morning."
The corresponding form when referring to non-humans is "what" (which has the emphatic form "whatever", and no possessive form). Another similar interrogative is "which" – this can refer to either humans or non-humans, normally implying selection from a particular set, as either interrogative pronoun ("Which do you prefer?") or interrogative
determiner
A determiner, also called determinative (abbreviated ), is a word, phrase, or affix that occurs together with a noun or noun phrase and generally serves to express the reference of that noun or noun phrase in the context. That is, a determiner m ...
(adjective) ("Which man should I choose?"). 'What' can also be used as a determiner ("What book are you reading?"), but 'who' cannot.
"Which", "who", and "what" as interrogatives can be either singular or plural; (examples including, "Which is the highest hill?" "Which are the highest hills?" "Who was born in 1920?" "Who were king and queen in 1920?") however, "who" and "what" often take a singular verb regardless of any supposed number. The questions "Who wants some cake?" and "What's in the bag?" do not presuppose anything about number in possible responses: "I want some cake", or "All of us want some"; and "A rabbit is in the bag", or "Five coins and a bus ticket".
As relative pronoun
The other chief use of "who" and its derivatives are in the formation of
relative clause
A relative clause is a clause that modifies a noun or noun phraseRodney D. Huddleston, Geoffrey K. Pullum, ''A Student's Introduction to English Grammar'', CUP 2005, p. 183ff. and uses some grammatical device to indicate that one of the arguments ...
s:
*"These are the men who work upstairs."
*"This is Tom, who(m) I believe you have already met."
*"I helped some lads whose car had broken down."
The corresponding form for non-humans is "which", although "whose" can be used as a possessive in relative clauses even when referring to non-humans: "I will have to fix the car whose engine I ruined."
In
restrictive relative clauses, when not preceded by a
preposition
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
, both "who(m)" and "which" can be replaced by "that", or (if not the
subject of the clause) by
zero
0 (zero) is a number representing an empty quantity. In place-value notation
Positional notation (or place-value notation, or positional numeral system) usually denotes the extension to any base of the Hindu–Arabic numeral system (or ...
. In relative clauses, "who" (like other relative pronouns) takes the
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
(singular or plural) of its antecedent. "Who" also takes the
person
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, ...
(first, second or third) of its antecedent:
* "I, who 'am' having a hard time right now, won't be able to help you."
* "I, a tired old man who 'is' fed up with all your nonsense, refuse to help you."
"Who" and "whom" can also be used to form
free relative clause
A relative clause is a clause that modifies a noun or noun phraseRodney D. Huddleston, Geoffrey K. Pullum, ''A Student's Introduction to English Grammar'', CUP 2005, p. 183ff. and uses some grammatical device to indicate that one of the arguments ...
s (those with no antecedent). The emphatic forms are often used for this purpose: informal: "I'll take whoever you choose"; formal: "I'll take whomever/whomsoever you choose". This corresponds to the use of "what(ever)" when referring to non-humans. (For the choice between "who(ever)" and "whom(ever)" in formal English, see below.)
The emphatic forms can also be used to make adverbial clauses, as in "Whomever/Whoever you choose, I'll be satisfied".
For more details, see
English relative clauses
Relative clauses in the English language are formed principally by means of relative pronouns. The basic relative pronouns are ''who'', ''which'', and ''that''; ''who'' also has the derived forms ''whom'' and ''whose''. Various grammatical rules an ...
.
Usage of "whom"
Tendency to replace "whom" with "who"
According to traditional
prescriptive grammar
Linguistic prescription, or prescriptive grammar, is the establishment of rules defining preferred usage of language. These rules may address such linguistic aspects as spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary, syntax, and semantics. Sometimes info ...
, "who" is the
subjective (nominative) form only, while "whom" is the corresponding
objective
Objective may refer to:
* Objective (optics), an element in a camera or microscope
* ''The Objective'', a 2008 science fiction horror film
* Objective pronoun, a personal pronoun that is used as a grammatical object
* Objective Productions, a Brit ...
form (just as "him" is the objective form corresponding to "he"). However, it has long been common, particularly in informal English, for the uninflected form "who" to be used in both cases, thus replacing "whom" in the contexts where the latter was traditionally used.
In 1975, S. Potter noted in ''Changing English'' that, "nearly half a century ago
Edward Sapir
Edward Sapir (; January 26, 1884 – February 4, 1939) was an American Jewish anthropologist-linguist, who is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the development of the discipline of linguistics in the United States.
Sa ...
predicted the demise of "whom", showing at great length that it was doomed because it was 'psychologically isolated' from the objective pronouns me, us, him, her, them on the one hand, and the invariables which, what, that and where, when, how, why on the other." By 1978, the 'who'–'whom' distinction was identified as having "slipped so badly that
t is
T, or t, is the twentieth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''tee'' (pronounced ), plural ''tees''. It is deri ...
almost totally uninformative". According to the
OED
The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a com ...
(2nd edition, 1989), "whom" is "no longer current in natural colloquial speech". Lasnik and Sobin argue that surviving occurrences of "whom" are not part of ordinary English grammar, but the result of extra-grammatical rules for producing "prestige" forms.
According to Mair, the decline of "whom" has been hastened by the fact that it is one of relatively few
synthetic (
inflected
In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defini ...
) remnants in the principally
analytical grammar of Modern English. It has also been claimed that the decline of "whom" is more advanced in the interrogative case than in the relative case, this possibly being related to the degree of complexity of the syntax.
However, some prescriptivists continue to defend "whom" as the only "correct" form in functions other than the subject. Mair notes that: "'whom' is moribund as an element of the core grammar of English, but is very much alive as a style marker whose correct use is acquired in the educational system
where it is taught he use of "whom"is highly restricted, but rather than disappear entirely, the form is likely to remain in use for some time to come because of its overt prestige in writing."
Whom is also sometimes used by way of
hypercorrection
In sociolinguistics, hypercorrection is non-standard use of language that results from the over-application of a perceived rule of language-usage prescription. A speaker or writer who produces a hypercorrection generally believes through a mi ...
, in places where it would not even be considered correct according to traditional rules, as in "Whom do you think you are?" For more examples see the section below.
Retention of the 'who'–'whom' distinction often co-occurs with another stylistic marker of formal or "prestige" Englishavoidance of the
stranded preposition Historically, grammarians have described preposition stranding or p-stranding as the syntactic construction in which a so-called ''stranded'', ''hanging'' or ''dangling'' preposition occurs somewhere other than immediately before its corresponding o ...
. This means that "whom" can frequently be found following a preposition, in cases where the usual informal equivalent would use ''who'' and place the preposition later in the sentence. For example:
* Formal: "To whom did you give it?"
* Informal: "Who did you give it to?"
In relative clauses, movement of the preposition further allows "who" to be replaced by "that" or removed entirely:
* Formal: "He is someone to whom I owe a great deal."
* Informal: "He is someone who I owe a great deal to", or "He is someone that I owe a great deal to", or "He is someone I owe a great deal to..."
Usage of "who" and "whom"
In the types of English in which "whom" is used (which are generally the more formal varieties, as described in the section above), the general grammatical rule is that "who" is the
subjective (nominative) form, analogous to the
personal pronouns
Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', ''they''). Personal pronouns may also take dif ...
"I", "he", "she", "we", "they", while "whom" is the
objective
Objective may refer to:
* Objective (optics), an element in a camera or microscope
* ''The Objective'', a 2008 science fiction horror film
* Objective pronoun, a personal pronoun that is used as a grammatical object
* Objective Productions, a Brit ...
(oblique) form, analogous to "me", "him", "her", "us" and "them". Thus, "who" is used as a verb
subject, while "whom" is used as an indirect or direct
object
Object may refer to:
General meanings
* Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept
** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place
** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter
* Goal, an ...
of a verb or as the object (complement) of a
preposition
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
.
Examples:
*As verb subject: "Who is waiting over there? Tom is someone who works hard" (original sentence, before being changed to a clause: "'He' works hard.")
*As verb object: "Whom do you support? She is someone whom many people admire." (original sentence, before being changed to a clause: "Many people admire 'her'.")
*As preposition complement: "On whom do you plan to rely? These are the players of whom I am most proud." (original sentence, before being changed to a clause: "I am most proud of 'them'.")
Notice that in a relative clause, the form depends on the role of the pronoun in the relative clause, not that of its antecedent in the main clause. For example, "I saw the man who ate the pie"not "whom", since "who" is the subject of "ate" (original sentence, before being changed to a clause: "'He' ate the pie"); it makes no difference that its antecedent "(the) man" is the object of "saw".
In the position of
predicative expression
A predicative expression (or just predicative) is part of a clause predicate, and is an expression that typically follows a copula (or linking verb), e.g. ''be'', ''seem'', ''appear'', or that appears as a second complement of a certain type of v ...
, i.e. as the complement of forms of the
copula "be", the form "who" is used, and considered correct, rather than "whom". (Compare the case of the personal pronouns, where the subjective form is traditionally considered correct, although the objective forms are more commonly usedsee .)
*"Who were those people?"
*"Who is this?", or "Who is it?" Compare: "It is I" (formal, and traditionally correct) to "it is me" (informal, but now common usage).
In the examples that follow, notice how, when the verb is a form of "be", the question "Who is the captain of the team?" or the noun clause "who the captain of the team is" (we know it is a noun clause because it replaces the word "something") is the same regardless of whether the original placement of the unknown person was before or after "be" (is):
*She asked something. John is captain of the team.
**Interrogative: She asked, "'Who' is captain of the team?"
**Noun clause: She asked "who the captain of the team is".
*She asked something. The captain of the team is John.
**Interrogative: She asked, "'Who' is captain of the team?"
**Noun clause: She asked "who the captain of the team is".
Ambiguous cases
A problem sometimes arises in constructions like this:
*"Beethoven, 'who' you say was a great composer, wrote only one opera."
Use of "who" here is normal, and to replace it with 'whom' would be grammatically incorrect, since the pronoun is the subject of "was", not the object of "say". (One would write "You say
hat
A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mecha ...
'he'
ot 'him'was a great composer".) Nevertheless, "whom" is quite commonly encountered, and even defended, in sentences of this type. It may arise from confusion with a form like:
*"Beethoven, whom you believe
r "whom you believe to be"a great composer, wrote only one opera."
In this case, "whom" is used correctly according to the traditional rules, since it is now the object of the verb "believe". (One would write "You believe him
ot 'he'(to be) a great composer.")
The use of "whom" in sentences of the first type ("Beethoven, whom you say was a great composer...")referred to as "subject 'whom' can therefore be regarded as a
hypercorrection
In sociolinguistics, hypercorrection is non-standard use of language that results from the over-application of a perceived rule of language-usage prescription. A speaker or writer who produces a hypercorrection generally believes through a mi ...
, resulting from awareness of a perceived need to correct "who" to "whom" in sentences of the second type. Examples of this apparently ungrammatical usage can be found throughout the history of English. The ''
OED
The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a com ...
'' traces it back to the 15thcentury, while Jespersen cites even earlier examples from
Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for '' The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He w ...
. More examples are given below:
*''Young Ferdinand, whom they suppose is drown'd,
..' (Shakespeare, ''
The Tempest'', III, 3)
*''
..going to seek the grave / Of Arthur, whom they say is kill'd to-night / On your suggestion.'' (Shakespeare, ''
King John'', IV, 2)
*''
..the rest of their company rescued them, and stood over them fighting till they were come to themselves, all but him whom they thought had been dead;
..' (Defoe, ''
The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
''The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe'' (now more commonly rendered as ''The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe'') is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published in 1719. Just as in its significantly more popular predecessor, ''Robinson ...
'', Chapter 6, Part 1. Use of ''whom'' here may be due partly to the proximity of ''him''.)
*''But if others were involved, it was Harris and Klebold whom students said seemed the tightest, who stood apart from the rest of their clique.'' (From ''
The Age
''The Age'' is a daily newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, that has been published since 1854. Owned and published by Nine Entertainment, ''The Age'' primarily serves Victoria (Australia), Victoria, but copies also sell in Tasmania, the Austral ...
'' newspaper,
Melbourne
Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...
, Australia, April 1999, in an article
syndicated from the ''Washington Post''. The original article had the "correct" ''who''. Note that the continuation with the parallel construction ''who stood apart'' illustrates how the use of subject ''whom'' can lead to inconsistencies.)
*''He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?'' (
King James Bible
The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version, is an Bible translations into English, English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and publis ...
, Matthew 16:15. Technically ''whom'' here is not a subject, but the
complement
A complement is something that completes something else.
Complement may refer specifically to:
The arts
* Complement (music), an interval that, when added to another, spans an octave
** Aggregate complementation, the separation of pitch-class ...
of the copula ''am''; but in this position too it is ''who'' that would be expected according to the traditional grammatical rules as given in the section above, as it would be in ''Who am I?'')
Doubts can also arise in the case of free relative clauses, formed with ''who(m)'', ''who(m)ever'' or ''who(m)soever''. Modern guides to English usage say that the relative pronoun should take the case appropriate to the relative clause, not the function performed by that clause within an external clause.
For example, it is correct to write ''I'll talk to whoever''
ot ''whomever''''will listen'', since ''whoever'' is the subject of ''will listen'' (regardless of the fact that the entire clause ''whoever will listen'' serves as the object of the preposition ''to''). On the other hand, ''Whomever you choose will suit me'' is correct, since ''whomever'' is now the object of ''choose'' (despite the fact that the entire relative clause is the subject of ''will suit'').
Similarly:
*''Let whoever is without sin cast the first stone.'' (In the internal clause, ''whoever'' is the subject of ''is''.)
*''Whom you choose will be placed on this list.'' (In the internal clause, ''whom'' is the object of ''choose''.)
In sentences of this type, however, as with the "subject ''whom''" examples above, use of ''whom(ever)'' is sometimes found in places where it would not be expected grammatically, due to the relative complexity of the syntax. In fact in
Middle English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English p ...
it was standard for the form of the pronoun to depend on the function in the external clause; the modern rule came about through re-analysis of the pronoun as primarily an element of the internal clause.
Usage of "whose"
"Whose" is the genitive case of "who".
* ''The boy ''whose'' name I don't remember came from Japan.''
Unlike the other forms of "who", relative "whose" (but not interrogative "whose") can still refer to non-persons,
in the way that all forms of the word could in Old and Middle English.
* ''The cars ''whose ''door won't open.''
Notes
Bibliography
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Who (Pronoun)
English pronouns
English words
English usage controversies
Interrogative words and phrases
te:ప్రశ్నార్థక పదాలు