Whenever I hear a good example (who/whoever)

[Mark Mandel]

I'm pretty sure we've discussed this construction here. Check the archive.

m a m

On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 8:54 AM, Mark Davies <Mark_Davies at byu.edu> wrote:

> Could this be related to who / whoever ? When I moved to Utah five years
> ago, I was struck by sentences like the following:
>
> "I can help who's next"
>
> (said, for example, by a worker at fast food restaurant, as a number of
> people are waiting in line).
>
> I'd use "I can help whoever's next".
>
> I know this use of "who" wasn't here in Utah back in the 1970s-1980s, but
> it seems to be the norm now.
>
> Mark D.
>
> ============================================
> Mark Davies
> Professor of (Corpus) Linguistics
> Brigham Young University
> (phone) 801-422-9168 / (fax) 801-422-0906
> Web: davies-linguistics.byu.edu
>
> ** Corpus design and use // Linguistic databases **
> ** Historical linguistics // Language variation **
> ** English, Spanish, and Portuguese **
>

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