he and who

[victor steinbok]

I don't dispute anything Arnold said--he knows far more about it than I ever
hope to learn. But his comment is about the relationship between two
processes. I was pointing to a single instance. To rephrase the original
post as a question, in light of Arnold's post, although the long-term
processes are independent, might the use of "he" in the _given_sentence_
have been consciously influenced by the hyper-correction of "who" within the
sentence that immediately follows? My initial guess is based on the notion
that most writers--especially professional writers (including
journalists)--plan more than a single sentence ahead. That would mean that a
succeeding sentence may influence an earlier one. It's not quite like
playing chess, but that's the general idea ;-) In particular, I suspect this
direction because (a) is more established and more pervasive than (b). And I
suspect it as a possibility at all because such proximity may well dispose
with the superficiality of "extremely superficial fact that both have a
nominative pronoun where old prescriptions would insist on an accusative".

I am not suggesting that (a) has any influence on (b) _in_general_--even if
I were not persuaded by Arnold's account (which I am), I simply have no
reason to construct such a generalization. But, absent this somewhat ad hoc
explanation, we'd have to go with Plan B theory--that it's just a
coincidence.

VS-)

On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 11:58 PM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:

>
> On Sep 1, 2011, at 11:26 AM, victor steinbok wrote:
>
> >
> > No new ground here, but I thought this is something people may want to
> add
> > to their files. This was just posted through TPM (TPM Facebook post):
> >
> > Does former Bush administration official David Welch's work with the now
> >> deposed Qaddafi regime raise legal questions for he and his employer? It
> >> depends on who you ask.
> >
> >
> >
> > I could write off the lone "he" as a mere typo. But it does look as if
> the
> > "he" and the "who" are not merely coincidental.
>
> there's absolutely no reason to think that these two phenomena -- (a) the
> erosion of _whom_ as a marked form of the lexeme WHO (leaving _whom_ only
> when it's in a constituent with its governing V or P), and (b) the spread of
> NomConjObjs (nominative conjoined objects) -- have anything whatsoever to do
> with one another, beyond the extremely superficial fact that both have a
> nominative pronoun where old prescriptions would insist on an accusative
> (basically, what they share is proscriptivist sanctions).  they are
> structurally, historically, and sociolinguistically different.  (forms of
> the lexeme WHO and forms of the definite personal pronouns are, in any case,
> deeply non-parallel.)  the _who_ variant in (a) has for decades, at least,
> clearly been standard, with _whom_ persisting (except in the special case
> just described) as a hyper-formal variant.  the nominative variants in (b)
> have quite a different profile, though they have been gaining ground as an
> informal standard, espe!
>  cially in speech.
>
> these are not arcane facts, or remotely new observations.
>
> arnold

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