[Ads-l] that:who::whom:which?

[Shapiro, Fred]

I believe that this statement is a profound misunderstanding of the OED.  Although the original OED certainly had prescriptivist elements, the current edition of the OED is the ultimate descriptivist.

Fred Shapiro


________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Joel Berson <berson at att.net>
Sent: Monday, April 18, 2016 9:54 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: that:who::whom:which?

But isn't the OED the ultimate prescriptivist?  It/he/she/they should get it right.


:-)Joel


      From: Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
 To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
 Sent: Monday, April 18, 2016 2:46 PM
 Subject: Re: [ADS-L] that:who::whom:which?

On Mon, Apr 18, 2016 at 12:03 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> I would think that here, as in many other contexts, "that" is used
> precisely to avoid the decision between "who" and "which", such as cases in
> which animals are the antecedents (especially pets):  a dog
> {that/?who/?which} had just been hit by a car...  Similarly for clones,
> I'd expect.  It's sort of like "that" is the "they" of relative pronouns.


Or it may simply be the case that prescriptive grammarians had ceased to be
seriously concerned about the supposed "distinction" between _who_/which_
and _that_ in restrictive [old style]/defining [new style] relative clauses
by the fall of 1950.
--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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