Than

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Nov 11, 2004, at 6:45 AM, Ed Keer wrote:

> Does anyone find this sentence grammatical?
>
> 1) She's the one than whom I am better.
>
> It sounds like ass to me. But Barbara Wallraff at the The Atlantic
> Monthly seems to think it's grammatical.  She uses it as evidence that
> "than" is both a  preposition and a conjunction in her November
> column.

there are two issues here, both of long standing in the usage
literature.  the first is whether "than" can be used as a preposition
as well as a conjunction; this pretty much comes down to whether the
manuals require nominative case for pronouns understood as subjects
("years older than I" -- "than" as conjunction) or allow accusative
case ("years older than me" -- "than" as preposition).  MWDEU notes
that the conjunction/preposition dispute has been going on for more
than two centuries and observes that both usages can be found in speech
and writing of all sorts,  Garner's Modern American Usage accepts
preposition "than" only in the most relaxed, informal contexts,
requiring conjunction syntax everywhere else.  (me, i think this is
nutty advice, but the point is that even garner grudgingly admits some
prepositional uses.)

against this background, you'd expect the sticklers to insist on "than
who".  but fronted "than" + NP looks an *awful* lot like PP fronting,
and (probably as a result of this fact) even the stickliest sticklers
require "whom" in this case.  MWDEU notes that Lowth 1762 insisted that
"than" was always a conjunction, *except in this one context*, where it
had to be a preposition (and govern the accusative) -- a systematic
exception that MWDEU suggests arose from the authority of Milton in
Paradise Lost ("Beelzebub... than whom, Satan except, none higher
sat").

Garner quotes the OED as stating that "than whom" "is universally
recognized instead of _than who_".  in a fit of common sense, however,
he labels "than whom" awkward, "essentially a literary idiom".  what
we're supposed to use instead, he does not say.  surely not "the one
than who I am better".  and if "than" is always supposed to be a
conjunction in formal writing, then "the one who I am better than"
would be utterly impossible there; english has stranded prepositions
(even garner concedes this), but not stranded *conjunctions*.  the
implied advice is to reword so as to avoid the problem entirely.

i have no problem with "the one who I am better than", but then i'm
happy with prepositional "than", stranded prepositions, *and* fronted
nominative "who".  your mileage might vary.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)