murky days on the WHO/WHOM front

[sagehen]

>At 11:41 AM -0500 3/29/02, sagehen wrote:
>>The appearance of this subordinate clause on another post this morning:-
>>"all of whom had a great sense of humor".... which could have been just as
>>correctly expressed as  "who all had a great sense of humor"... brings
>>several thoughts to mind:  (1) no wonder people get confused! and (2) it's
>>easy to understand why someone might suppose that if syntactic analysis and
>>close examination for meaning  combined can't lead to one *correct* result,
>>the whole enterprise must just be so much BB-stacking.
>
>But I still think it's a fact about the morphosyntax of "who(m)"
>specifically.  In the same two environments, most standard English
>speakers would immediately have verified
>
>they (*them) all had a great sense of humor
>all of them (*they) had a great sense of humor
>
>It's only when the WHOOM swoops in that everyone gets flustered.
>
>larry
~~~~~~~
Agreed. Maybe because it's hard to hear, being not nearly so distinct in
sound between the two forms as  he/him, she/her, they/them, we/us; & thus
doesn't get well imprinted on the language faculty during the early years?
AM