"which" = 'who'

[Laurence Horn]

On Sep 7, 2011, at 8:53 PM, Spanbock/Svoboda-Spanbock wrote:

> If she was dead, maybe it was a slip? Dead people aren't exactly
> persons in the same way.

I think it was Jim McCawley who pointed out the difference between:

the corpse which/*who was sprawled on the table
the dead person (dead lady, dead man,...) who/*which was sprawled on the table

But maybe not everyone shares these judgments.

(Of course, "dead body" works like "corpse":  the dead body which/*who was sprawled on the table.)

LH

>
> On Sep 7, 2011, at 12:15 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      "which" = 'who'
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Eyewitness to Carson City IHOP shootings, on CNN: "I saw a lady
>> which had
>> slumped over on the table."
>>
>> Guy (on phone) otherwise well-spoken, sounds white, not young. But
>> not old
>> enough to be a speaker of Middle English, either.
>>
>> I used to see this occasionally in freshman themes more than twenty
>> years
>> ago. It would not occur to me in ten million years to use "which" in
>> this
>> way.
>>
>> JL
>>
>> --
>> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
>> truth."
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org