hypercorrection/grammatical evolution (was: murky days)

[Drew Danielson]

so we are seeing a possible shift from an internal-clausal-object-case
'whom' to a external-prepositional-object-case 'whom'?  How would this
analysis stand up in this case of 'for [personal relative pronoun] bell
tolls'?  I spoze this case would be opaque, since both the old 'whom'
and the new 'whom' would be appropriate, and everyone would just say
'whom'.  Tho, a 'whomem' in this case - or some such thing that
indicates the doubly-objective function of the relative pronoun - would
certainly make this reanalysis clearer (for whomem the bell tolls?)

I still think we are more likely to hear the hypo-correct 'for who the
bell tolls' from a considerable majority of whomisusers.

This leads me to wonder, what it is called when there's a reanalysis
that is both highly local (on a per-individual basis, even), highly
distributed (among a significant subset of fluent speakers from across
the language) and demographically independent?   A reanalysis that grows
out of a very common hypercorrection like this could likely follow this
sort of sociological pattern.



Lynne Murphy wrote:
>
> Yes, but might hypercorrection lead to syntactic reanalysis?  Perhaps this
> will evolve so that all relative 'who's become 'whom's, for example.  (Just
> like the plural form seems to be evolving to apostrophe-s, but we've been
> down that road enough times...)
>
> Then there's the old favorite "...and I", never "...and me" in my mother's
> variety (which seems like a decent argument for Construction Grammar).  It
> sort of brings into question the idea of 'impossible lexical items'.  Was
> it Jim McCawley who used the example of "my uncle and" as an impossible
> lexical item?  So "X and" is an impossible lexical item, but we've got
> definite examples of (phrasal) lexical items of the form "and X" ("and I",
> "and so forth", "et cetera")--which I suppose has to do with English being
> a head-initial language?
>
> Just musing, if not amusing,
> Lynne
>
> --On Thursday, March 28, 2002 11:40 am -0500 Drew Danielson
> <andrew.danielson at CMU.EDU> wrote:
>
> > It sounds more like hypercorrection to me.  It would be interesting to
> > be able to track the WHOM-misuser's WHO/WHOM usage across time and
> > context....
> >
> >
> > "Peter A. McGraw" wrote:
> >>
> >> "Whom" in this context (subject of a subordinate clause which itself is
> >> the object of a preposition or the main-clause verb) is suddenly running
> >> rampant.  I hear it so often (especially from academics and journalists,
> >> it seems) that I wonder if a syntactic reanalysis of some sort is
> >> actually taking root.
> >>
> >> Peter Mc.
> >>
> >> --On Thursday, March 28, 2002 7:35 AM -0500 "Dennis R. Preston"
> >> <preston at PILOT.MSU.EDU> wrote:
> >>
> >> >> Ther are many traps for WHOMers (one of the most important
> >> >> sociolinguistic subgroups in US society) out there; this one
> >> >> obviosuly fell prey to the rule "use 'whom' after a preposition."
> >> >> Didn't this guy's mom tell him to look left AND right before
> >> >> attaching an -m?
> >> >
> >> > dInIs
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >> from a letter today (3/27/02) to the New York Times, from
> >> >> Marc F. Bernstein, Chief Academic Officer, Kaplan K12
> >> >> Learning Services, New York, about funding for New York City
> >> >> schools:
> >> >>
> >> >>  Regardless of whom should be blamed, it's the students who
> >> >>  will suffer.
> >> >>
> >> >> i wonder if he'd have committed himself to something like
> >> >>  Regardless of whom is blamed,...
> >> >>
> >> >> arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)
> >> >
> >> > --
> >> > Dennis R. Preston
> >> > Department of Linguistics and Languages
> >> > Michigan State University
> >> > East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
> >> > preston at pilot.msu.edu
> >> > Office: (517)353-0740
> >> > Fax: (517)432-2736
> >>
> >> ************************************************************************
> >> **** Peter A. McGraw
> >>                    Linfield College   *   McMinnville, OR
> >>                             pmcgraw at linfield.edu
> >
> > --
> > ???????????????????????????????????????????????
> > ?          D r e w  D a n i e l s o n         ?
> > ?          <andrew.danielson at cmu.edu>         ?
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> >  If everyone would sweep in front of their
> >  own door, the whole world would be clean.
> >                      -- Middle Eastern proverb
>
> Dr M Lynne Murphy
> Lecturer in Linguistics
> Acting Director, MA in Applied Linguistics
> School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
> University of Sussex
> Brighton BN1 9QH
> UK
>
> phone +44-(0)1273-678844
> fax   +44-(0)1273-671320

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 If everyone would sweep in front of their
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                     -- Middle Eastern proverb