Who(pronoun)

Thepronounwho,inEnglish,is aninterrogativepronoun and arelative pronoun,used primarily to refer to persons.

Unmarked,whois the pronoun's subjective form; its inflected forms are theobjectivewhomand thepossessivewhose.The set has derivedindefiniteformswhoever,whomever,andwhoseever,as well as a further, earlier such setwhosoever,whomsoever,andwhosesoever(see also "-ever").

Etymology

The interrogative and relative pronounswhoderive from theOld Englishsingular interrogativehwā,and whose paradigm is set out below:

Paradigm of Old Englishhwā

	Person	Non-person
Nominative	hwā	hwæt
Genitive	hwæs
Dative	hwǣm / hwām
Accusative	hwone	hwæt
Instrumental		hwȳ

It was not until the end of the 17th century thatwhobecame the only pronoun that could ask about the identity of persons andwhatfully lost this ability.

"The first occurrences of wh-relatives date from the twelfth century (with the possible exceptionhwær(see Kivimaa 1966: 35)). The wh- form does not become frequent, however, until the fourteenth century. "Today,relativewhosecan still refer to non-persons (e.g.,the car whose door won't open).

The spelling 'who' does not correspond to the word's pronunciation/huː/;it is the spelling that represents the expected outcome ofhwā,while the pronunciation represents a divergent outcome – for details seePronunciation of English ⟨wh⟩.The word iscognatewithLatinquisandGreekποιός.

Uses

As interrogative pronoun

"Who" and its derived forms can be used asinterrogative pronouns,to form questions:

• "Who did that?"
• "Who did you meet this morning?" (formal: "Who(m) did you meet this morning?" )
• "Who did you speak to?" (formal: "To whom did you speak?" or "Whom did you speak to?" )
• "Whoever could have done that?" (emphatic form, expressing disbelief)
• "Whose bike is that?" (use of 'whose' as possessive determiner/adjective; seepossessiveandEnglish possessive)
• "Whose do you like best?" (use of 'whose' as possessive pronoun)

The same forms (though not usually the emphatic ones) are used to makeindirect questions:

• "We don't know who did that."
• "I wonder who(m) she met this morning."

The corresponding form when referring to non-humans is "what" (which has the emphatic form "whatever", and no possessive form). Another similar interrogative is "which" – this can refer to either humans or non-humans, normally implying selection from a particular set, as either interrogative pronoun ( "Which do you prefer?" ) or interrogativedeterminer(adjective) ( "Which man should I choose?" ). 'What' can also be used as a determiner ( "What book are you reading?" ), but 'who' cannot.

"Which", "who", and "what" as interrogatives can be either singular or plural ( "Which is the highest hill?", "Which are the highest hills?", "Who was born in 1920?" or "Who were king and queen in 1920?" ). "Who" and "what" often take a singular verb regardless of any supposed number. The questions "Who wants some cake?" and "What's in the bag?" do not presuppose anything about number in possible responses: "I want some cake", or "All of us want some"; and "A rabbit is in the bag", or "Five coins and a bus ticket".

As relative pronoun

The other chief use of "who" and its derivatives are in the formation ofrelative clauses:

• "These are the men who work upstairs."
• "This is Tom, who(m) I believe you have already met."
• "I helped some lads whose car had broken down."

The corresponding form for non-humans is "which", although "whose" can be used as a possessive in relative clauses even when referring to non-humans: "I will have to fix the car whose engine I ruined."

Inrestrictive relative clauses,when not preceded by apreposition,both "who(m)" and "which" can be replaced by "that", or (if not thesubjectof the clause) byzero.In relative clauses, "who" (like other relative pronouns) takes thenumber(singular or plural) of its antecedent. "Who" also takes theperson(first, second or third) of its antecedent:

• "I, who 'am' having a hard time right now, won't be able to help you."
• "I, a tired old man who 'is' fed up with all your nonsense, refuse to help you."

"Who" and "whom" can also be used to formfree relative clauses(those with no antecedent). The emphatic forms are often used for this purpose: informal: "I'll take whoever you choose"; formal: "I'll take whomever/whomsoever you choose". This corresponds to the use of "what(ever)" when referring to non-humans. (For the choice between "who(ever)" and "whom(ever)" in formal English, see§ Ambiguous casesbelow.)

The emphatic forms can also be used to make adverbial clauses, as in "Whomever/Whoever you choose, I'll be satisfied".

For more details, seeEnglish relative clauses.

Usage of "whom"

"Whom" redirects here. For the radio station on Mount Washington, New Hampshire, seeWHOM.

Tendency to replace "whom" with "who"

1939 poster asking "Whom have you exposed to syphilis?" A modern English speaker would use "Who."

According to traditionalprescriptive grammar,"who" is thesubjective(nominative) form only, while "whom" (/ˈhuːm/HOOM) is the correspondingobjectiveform (just as "him" is the objective form corresponding to "he" ). It has long been common, particularly in informal English, for the uninflected form "who" to be used in both cases, thus replacing "whom" in the contexts where the latter was traditionally used.

In 1975, S. Potter noted inChanging Englishthat, "nearly half a century agoEdward Sapirpredicted the demise of "whom", showing at great length that it was doomed because it was 'psychologically isolated' from the objective pronouns me, us, him, her, them on the one hand, and the invariables which, what, that and where, when, how, why on the other. "By 1978, the 'who'–'whom' distinction was identified as having "slipped so badly that [it is] almost totally uninformative".According to theOED(2nd edition, 1989), "whom" is "no longer current in natural colloquial speech". Lasnik and Sobin argue that surviving occurrences of "whom" are not part of ordinary English grammar, but the result of extra-grammatical rules for producing "prestige" forms.

According to Mair, the decline of "whom" has been hastened by the fact that it is one of relatively fewsynthetic(inflected) remnants in the principallyanalyticalgrammar of Modern English.It has also been claimed that the decline of "whom" is more advanced in the interrogative case than in the relative case, this possibly being related to the degree of complexity of the syntax.

Some prescriptivists continue to defend "whom" as the only "correct" form in functions other than the subject.Mair notes that: "'whom' is moribund as an element of the core grammar of English, but is very much alive as a style marker whose correct use is acquired in the educational system [, where it is taught]. [The use of" whom "] is highly restricted, but rather than disappear entirely, the form is likely to remain in use for some time to come because of its overt prestige in writing."

Whom is also sometimes used by way ofhypercorrection,in places where it would not even be considered correct according to traditional rules, as in "Whom do you think you are?"For more examples see the§ Ambiguous casessection below.

Retention of the 'who'–'whom' distinction often co-occurs with another stylistic marker of formal or "prestige" English – avoidance of thestranded preposition.This means that "whom" can frequently be found following a preposition, in cases where the usual informal equivalent would usewhoand place the preposition later in the sentence. For example:

• Formal: "To whom did you give it?"
• Informal: "Who did you give it to?"

In relative clauses, movement of the preposition further allows "who" to be replaced by "that" or removed entirely:

• Formal: "He is someone to whom I owe a great deal."
• Informal: "He is someone who I owe a great deal to", or "He is someone that I owe a great deal to", or "He is someone I owe a great deal to..."

Difference between "who" and "whom"

In the types of English in which "whom" is used (which are generally the more formal varieties, as described in the section above), the general grammatical rule is that "who" is thesubjective(nominative) form, analogous to thepersonal pronouns"I", "he", "she", "we", "they", while "whom" is theobjective(oblique) form, analogous to "me", "him", "her", "us" and "them". Thus, "who" is used as a verbsubject,while "whom" is used as an indirect or directobjectof a verb or as the object (complement) of apreposition.

Examples:

• As verb subject: "Who is waiting over there? Tom is someone who works hard" (original sentence, before being changed to a clause: "'He' works hard." )
• As verb object: "Whom do you support? She is someone whom many people admire." (original sentence, before being changed to a clause: "Many people admire 'her'." )
• As preposition complement: "On whom do you plan to rely? These are the players of whom I am most proud." (original sentence, before being changed to a clause: "I am most proud of 'them'." )

Notice that in a relative clause, the form depends on the role of the pronoun in the relative clause, not that of its antecedent in the main clause. For example, "I saw the man who ate the pie" – not "whom", since "who" is the subject of "ate" (original sentence, before being changed to a clause: "'He' ate the pie" ); it makes no difference that its antecedent "(the) man" is the object of "saw".

In the position ofpredicative expression,i.e. as the complement of forms of thecopula"be", the form "who" is used, and considered correct, rather than "whom". (Compare the case of the personal pronouns, where the subjective form is traditionally considered correct, although the objective forms are more commonly used – seeEnglish personal pronouns § Case usage.)

• "Who were those people?"
• "Who is this?", or "Who is it?" Compare: "It is I" (formal, and traditionally correct) to "it is me" (informal, but now common usage).

In the examples that follow, notice how, when the verb is a form of "be", the question "Who is the captain of the team?" or the noun clause "who the captain of the team is" (we know it is a noun clause because it replaces the word "something" ) is the same regardless of whether the original placement of the unknown person was before or after "be" (is):

• She asked something. John is captain of the team.
  • Interrogative: She asked, "'Who' is captain of the team?"
  • Noun clause: She asked "who the captain of the team is".
• She asked something. The captain of the team is John.
  • Interrogative: She asked, "'Who' is captain of the team?"
  • Noun clause: She asked "who the captain of the team is".

Ambiguous cases

A problem sometimes arises in constructions like this:

• "Beethoven, 'who' you say was a great composer, wrote only one opera."

Use of "who" here is normal, and to replace it with 'whom' would be grammatically incorrect, since the pronoun is the subject of "was", not the object of "say". (One would write "You say [that] 'he' [not 'him'] was a great composer".) Nevertheless, "whom" is quite commonly encountered, and even defended, in sentences of this type. It may arise from confusion with a form like:

• "Beethoven, whom you believe [or" whom you believe to be "] a great composer, wrote only one opera."

In this case, "whom" is used correctly according to the traditional rules, since it is now the object of the verb "believe". (One would write "You believe him [not 'he'] (to be) a great composer." )

The use of "whom" in sentences of the first type ( "Beethoven, whom you say was a great composer..." ) – referred to as "subject 'whom' – can therefore be regarded as ahypercorrection,resulting from awareness of a perceived need to correct "who" to "whom" in sentences of the second type. Examples of this apparently ungrammatical usage can be found throughout the history of English. TheOEDtraces it back to the 15thcentury, while Jespersen cites even earlier examples fromChaucer.More examples are given below:

• Young Ferdinand,whomthey suppose is drown'd, [...](Shakespeare,The Tempest,III, 3)
• [...] going to seek the grave / Of Arthur,whomthey say is kill'd to-night / On your suggestion.(Shakespeare,King John,IV, 2)
• [...] the rest of their company rescued them, and stood over them fighting till they were come to themselves, all but himwhomthey thought had been dead; [...](Defoe,The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe,Chapter 6, Part 1. Use ofwhomhere may be due partly to the proximity ofhim.)
• But if others were involved, it was Harris and Kleboldwhomstudents said seemed the tightest, who stood apart from the rest of their clique.(FromThe Agenewspaper,Melbourne,Australia, April 1999, in an articlesyndicatedfrom theWashington Post.The original article had the "correct"who.Note that the continuation with the parallel constructionwhostood apartillustrates how the use of subjectwhomcan lead to inconsistencies.)
• He saith unto them, Butwhomsay ye that I am?(King James Bible,Matthew 16:15. Technicallywhomhere is not a subject, but thecomplementof the copulaam;but in this position too it iswhothat would be expected according to the traditional grammatical rules as given in the section above, as it would be inWho am I?)

Doubts can also arise in the case of free relative clauses, formed withwho(m),who(m)everorwho(m)soever.Modern guides to English usage say that the relative pronoun should take the case appropriate to the relative clause, not the function performed by that clause within an external clause.For example, it is correct to writeI'll talk to whoever[notwhomever]will listen,sincewhoeveris the subject ofwill listen(regardless of the fact that the entire clausewhoever will listenserves as the object of the prepositionto). On the other hand,Whomever you choose will suit meis correct, sincewhomeveris now the object ofchoose(despite the fact that the entire relative clause is the subject ofwill suit).

Similarly:

• Let whoever is without sin cast the first stone.(In the internal clause,whoeveris the subject ofis.)
• Whom you choose will be placed on this list.(In the internal clause,whomis the object ofchoose.)

In sentences of this type, as with the "subjectwhom"examples above, use ofwhom(ever)is sometimes found in places where it would not be expected grammatically, due to the relative complexity of the syntax. In fact inMiddle Englishit was standard for the form of the pronoun to depend on the function in the external clause; the modern rule came about through re-analysis of the pronoun as primarily an element of the internal clause.

Usage of "whose"

"Whose" is the genitive case of "who".

• The boywhosename I don't remember came from Japan.

Unlike the other forms of "who", relative "whose" (but not interrogative "whose" ) can still refer to non-persons,in the way that all forms of the word could in Old and Middle English.

• The carswhosedoor won't open.

Further information:Inanimate whose

Bibliography

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