I don't know what to believe anymore

[Brinestone]

On the first day of my usage class, we took the following "quiz" to see how much we know about crazy grammar-nazi issues in the English language.

1. He is one of those boys who always get/gets in trouble.

2. Whoever/Whomever we appoint will become president.

3. What this country needs is/are some honest politicians.

4. More important/importantly, the council raised application fees.

5. Give the package to whoever/whomever opens the door.

6. Let's you and I/me go to a movie.

7. The thought he/him to be I/me.

8. If he was/were there, I didn't see him.

9. I shall/will return.

10. I feel bad/badly.

The answers were:

1. get
2. Whoever
3. is
4. important
5. whomever
6. I
7. him, me
8. was
9. shall
10. bad

We got the same quiz in my grammar class today, but the answer to number 2 was different (grammar teacher said it should be Whomever).

The rationale the usage teacher gave for using Whoever in question 2 was that while the word is the object of the clause, "We appoint whomever," it is the subject of the sentence, "Whoever will become president," which is more important. Thus, it should not be in the objective case.

My grammar teacher said that because the word is the object of the first clause, it should be in the objective case, even though it is the subject of the sentence.

The thing is, I can see both points of view (though I sympathize with the first). In class, I kind of embarassed myself by getting in a pretty heated argument with the teacher, insisting that I had, indeed, learned the exact opposite in a different class only a few days before. He insisted Whomever was right, and I insisted Whoever was right. Finally we just moved on.

But who's to say he's wrong? Who's to say I'm wrong? I don't have any idea where to look an issue like this up (two good usage dictionaries and Chicago had nothing). I feel a need to know whether I'm right or wrong so I can either gloat or accede. Or, if I can find that both are considered acceptable, depending on whom you ask, even that would be better than this sinking suspicion that one of my teachers doesn't know what he or she is talking about.

Help!
 

[Porter]

Give up.  English don't make no sense.

[Brinestone]

. . . b-b-but I don't wanna be an accountant!  

[Annie Subjunctive]

The rules are slipping.  Slipping, I tell you!  First, the commas start disappearing, then people start putting prepositions wherever they dang well please.  What next?

Also, I want the subjunctive back.

[Porter]

I wish I were subjunctive.

[Jonathon]

The rules have been "slipping" for as long as language has existed. It's just life.

But if it makes you feel better, Annie, there was one time in my Old English class when we came across a verb in a passage that should've been in the subjunctive mood, but it wasn't. So people have been messing that one up for at least 1200 years. And I'm sure that at some point in history, people were complaining about the death of the optative and injunctive moods.

Also, putting prepositions at the end was more standard and correct until one Bishop Lowth, who apparently fancied himself a grammarian, starting writing "grammars" of English in which he said that it's wrong to put prepositions at the end. You can also thank him for the "rules" on split infinitives and using "I" instead of "me" (as in "He is taller than I"). Jerk.



Short answer, Ruth: there is no right answer. At least not if you take a descriptive approach. But the prescriptive answer is that if it serves as both subject and object, subject trumps. It should only be in object case if it's the object of both clauses. Here's the rationale: every finite verb needs a subject. If the pronoun is serving as the subject of one verb, then it must be in subject case. Your grammar teacher is wrong.

link 1

link 2

Try this quiz.

[Brinestone]

On the quiz you linked to, is a the answer to #2 because of the "be" verb?

That's the only one I missed.

[Jonathon]

Yup. See? There's Bishop Lowth's insidious influence once again.

[Brinestone]

*shudders*

[Uchiha Itachi]

Whomever.  Because it sounds better.  If you want to get so picky, then avoid the ambigious case altogether by saying "The person/actor/entity".  But in a more general sense, the entire construction "Whomever we appoint" is the subject, since "whoever" acting as the subject by itself would have an entirely different meaning.  "Whomever we appoint" as a phrase does not take a separate objective and subjective case, nor does it need to since it is a fairly precise noun.

"What this country needs..." has no reason to be phrased that way, and matches a plural to a singular.  "This country needs..." would be more concise and more correct.

"More important/importantly" is also incorrect, no matter which you use.

"Let's" is a contraction of "let us", and renders the "you and I/me" redundent and ungrammatical.

"The" is not a noun.

A better way to phrase 8 (and one which clears things up a bit) would be, "I didn't see him, even if he was there."  True, it is the "even" which takes the syntactic burden of clearing things up, but the order of "I didn't see him" and "he was there" matters in communicating which is more important.

The terms "will" and "shall" have slightly different meanings, but in a purely grammatical sense neither is correct or incorrect as used here.  Using "shall" merely allows that it is only intended that something happen, whereas "will" indicates that it is certain to occur.  If I say, "you will die..." it means something quite different from, "you shall die...".

Likewise, "I feel bad" and "I feel badly" would mean entirely different things, if either were correct at all.  One happens to be an accepted usage, the other is not, but neither is really correct, and syntactically they wouldn't mean the same thing anyway.

The problem with the majority of these sample questions is that the sentence is already so badly broken from a grammatical point of view that it is impossble for either choice to render the sentence meaningful outside of being an accepted usage.

But simply being an accepted usage doesn't render a construction grammatical, it just means that most people will exempt that usage from the rules of grammer.

[Brinestone]

I think the point of the exercise was to prove to us that we don't know everything and, perhaps more important, to prove that grammarians are sometimes idiots who make up nonsensical rules for non-situations. However, being interested in this sort of thing, I at least wanted to know what the supposed rule was before I made my own decisions about how to use the language.

Whomever. Because it sounds better. If you want to get so picky, then avoid the ambigious case altogether by saying "The person/actor/entity". But in a more general sense, the entire construction "Whomever we appoint" is the subject, since "whoever" acting as the subject by itself would have an entirely different meaning. "Whomever we appoint" as a phrase does not take a separate objective and subjective case, nor does it need to since it is a fairly precise noun.

You can say whatever you like, but as long as the bigwigs disagree with you (and me), you're still wrong. In a case like this, I expect no one would notice or care if whomever slipped into print. About three picky grammarians might frown, but that's it. Did you read Jon Boy's links?

"What this country needs..." has no reason to be phrased that way, and matches a plural to a singular. "This country needs..." would be more concise and more correct.

Sure, but people say things like this all the time. Saying it's awkward doesn't mean nobody will say it, and when they do, what then?

"More important/importantly" is also incorrect, no matter which you use.

More important is not incorrect. I used it in my first paragraph, and it's just fine there. Where are you getting that it's incorrect? You just don't like it?

"Let's" is a contraction of "let us", and renders the "you and I/me" redundent and ungrammatical.

This one's archaic and British, which is why it sounds stupid to us modern Americans. Apparently some grammarian wrote a stunning essay on why it should be you and I instead of you and me, but I'll have to read it and find it pretty stunning before I agree. The original sentence is the first line of T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Odd as it is, it's a real sentence used by a real person.

"The" is not a noun.

Typo. My bad; I was typing fast. It should be They.

A better way to phrase 8 (and one which clears things up a bit) would be, "I didn't see him, even if he was there." True, it is the "even" which takes the syntactic burden of clearing things up, but the order of "I didn't see him" and "he was there" matters in communicating which is more important.

The question is testing whether the sentence is in the subjunctive or the indicative mood. Your reordering makes it a bit easier to decide on indicative, but someone might still be fooled into thinking it should be "I didn't see him, even if he were there."

The terms "will" and "shall" have slightly different meanings, but in a purely grammatical sense neither is correct or incorrect as used here. Using "shall" merely allows that it is only intended that something happen, whereas "will" indicates that it is certain to occur. If I say, "you will die..." it means something quite different from, "you shall die...".

Yeah, and shall is pretty much dying in American usage. When was the last time someone you know used shall? I thought this question was out of date and irrelevant to today's writers and editors.

Likewise, "I feel bad" and "I feel badly" would mean entirely different things, if either were correct at all. One happens to be an accepted usage, the other is not, but neither is really correct, and syntactically they wouldn't mean the same thing anyway.

I can't imagine feeling badly. Of all the senses to go, that seems the least likely, and I would never say, "I see badly." I would say, "I can't see very well." The only possible meaning is "I feel sorry" or something similar to it, and so bad is the only possible choice there.

But simply being an accepted usage doesn't render a construction grammatical, it just means that most people will exempt that usage from the rules of grammer.

I honestly don't know what you mean here. Could you elaborate?

[Jonathon]

Whomever.  Because it sounds better.  If you want to get so picky, then avoid the ambigious case altogether by saying "The person/actor/entity".  But in a more general sense, the entire construction "Whomever we appoint" is the subject, since "whoever" acting as the subject by itself would have an entirely different meaning.  "Whomever we appoint" as a phrase does not take a separate objective and subjective case, nor does it need to since it is a fairly precise noun.

It's true that the entire clause "whoever we appoint" is the subject of the sentence, but not quite in the way you mean. "Whoever" is the head of the clause, and it must agree grammatically with the verb; this means it must be in subject case. The rest of the clause is subordinate to the compound relative "whoever," so it doesn't have to agree grammatically. Grammatical agreement has nothing to do with precision or euphony and everything to do with function.

"More important/importantly" is also incorrect, no matter which you use.

I honestly have no idea what you're using as a standard of correctness. Are you just going by your own preferences? Sentence modifiers—especially disjunctive ones—are not easy to parse, so there is no strictly grammatical reason for favoring one or the other—meaning there's also no grammatical reason to say that either one is incorrect.

"Let's" is a contraction of "let us", and renders the "you and I/me" redundent and ungrammatical.

redundant ? ungrammatical

And anyway, it's not even particularly redundant. It's simply an appositive of the implied "we" in the imperative, and it serves to disambiguate the "we"—that is, it's inclusive, not exclusive.

"The" is not a noun.

Yeah. No kidding. If something is an obvious typo, you can say so instead of getting all pedagogical about it.

The terms "will" and "shall" have slightly different meanings, but in a purely grammatical sense neither is correct or incorrect as used here.  Using "shall" merely allows that it is only intended that something happen, whereas "will" indicates that it is certain to occur.  If I say, "you will die..." it means something quite different from, "you shall die...".

You keep saying that things are grammatically incorrect. I do not think it means what you think it means. There's nothing incorrect about either of them, depending on the intended meaning. Also, "shall" has a much wider range of meaning; it could be a simple future marker, or it could show an order or requirement, volition, or inevitability.

Likewise, "I feel bad" and "I feel badly" would mean entirely different things, if either were correct at all.  One happens to be an accepted usage, the other is not, but neither is really correct, and syntactically they wouldn't mean the same thing anyway.

I'm really baffled by your idea of grammatical correctness. Grammaticality is defined by accepted usage. There is absolutely nothing wrong with "I feel bad." It has a subject, a copula verb, and a subject complement. This is an extremely common construction (I just used it in this sentence), and there is no way you could argue that it's incorrect.

But because an adverb cannot be used to modify a noun, it cannot serve as a subject complement. That's why the construction "I feel badly" is incorrect when used with a meaning like "I am sad."

The problem with the majority of these sample questions is that the sentence is already so badly broken from a grammatical point of view that it is impossble for either choice to render the sentence meaningful outside of being an accepted usage.

No, the problem with these questions is that they're meant to test one's knowledge of traditional usage rules and to trip up people who think they know those rules. It's not an exercise in writing well or anything like that.

But simply being an accepted usage doesn't render a construction grammatical, it just means that most people will exempt that usage from the rules of grammer.

And where do you think those grammar rules come from?

[Uchiha Itachi]

Grammar always refers to the rules of the language, not the way the language is actually used by anyone.  Look it up.

English has a very large number of "accepted usages" that do not follow any "rules" other than being accepted by most English speakers.

For instance, "more important" is a fragment that stands for "it is more important that", or "which is more important" depending on where it is used.  But there is simply no rule in English grammer that permits this modification.  It is a matter of convention.  Like the fact that "let's" is always assumed to be an inclusive form of "let us" while the uncontracted form tends to be more open to being exclusive.

These are not established by the rules, they are exceptions to the rules.  Or to put it more precisely, these usages are not established systematically, they are varient instances.

My point is that when people get picky about grammer, they aren't talking about the language that anyone speaks or writes.  You're talking about "style" and "accepted usage" in most of these questions.  That is a fundamentally different concept from systematic rules of how the language is spoken.

Like, "I feel bad."  What does "bad" mean here?  Is it the noun meaning "wickedness" or is it the adjective?  Because the sense of the phrase ("I feel wickedness") if you take it to be the noun is really different from what people ususally mean when they say this.  But obviously it is grammatically incorrect to use the adjective as a direct object...except in this case, since it is an accepted usage to use a number of adjectives as direct objects of "feel".

Except that the exception itself is not a matter of grammer, it is not systematic, it is an arbitrary convention derived from the chaotic individual choices of thousands of people using the language without much attention to the underlying structure.

It is possible to use a very simple English grammer to say everything you need to say, and avoid contradicting any rules.  You'll sound silly, but you can do it if you want.  It isn't necessary to break the basic rules, but we all do it and there isn't any apparent reason to get too worked up over it.

But I think it's silly to enshrine all the "accepted usages" as being part of the grammer.  They're not, and that's that.  Even if it is accepted usage to use the term "grammer" to mean "accepted usage", that is merely a recursion.  Calling "the way everyone does things" a "system" doesn't actually make it a system, it merely means that you lose the concept of "system".

English has pretty much lost the concept of "grammer" because of people that insist they never say or write anything that is ungrammatical.  It's all a bunch of BS.

[Annie Subjunctive]

Do not go up against Jon Boy and Ruth in a Grammar war when death is on the line!

[Jonathon]

Grammar always refers to the rules of the language, not the way the language is actually used by anyone.  Look it up.

*dies laughing*

I don't need to look it up, thanks. I'm getting a degree in this sort of stuff, so I've had plenty of classes that discussed what grammar really is. The rules of the language describe how it's being used. Grammar is not a science, and it is not necessarily logical. It is a system of rules to explain how speakers of the language speak the language.

English has a very large number of "accepted usages" that do not follow any "rules" other than being accepted by most English speakers.

For instance, "more important" is a fragment that stands for "it is more important that", or "which is more important" depending on where it is used.  But there is simply no rule in English grammer that permits this modification.  It is a matter of convention.  Like the fact that "let's" is always assumed to be an inclusive form of "let us" while the uncontracted form tends to be more open to being exclusive.

Except that it's not a fragment sentence, even though it could be expanded into a complete sentence; it's a sentence modifier like "obviously" or "unfortunately." You could expand either of those into a complete sentence (like "It is obvious that . . .") but you don't have to, because there's a rule that allows you to in English.

These are not established by the rules, they are exceptions to the rules.  Or to put it more precisely, these usages are not established systematically, they are varient instances.

But they are systematic. Sentence modifiers are incredibly common, and they follow the same pattern. It doesn't get more systematic than that.

My point is that when people get picky about grammer, they aren't talking about the language that anyone speaks or writes.  You're talking about "style" and "accepted usage" in most of these questions.  That is a fundamentally different concept from systematic rules of how the language is spoken.

Yes, I know. This is what I do for a living.

Like, "I feel bad."  What does "bad" mean here?  Is it the noun meaning "wickedness" or is it the adjective?  Because the sense of the phrase ("I feel wickedness") if you take it to be the noun is really different from what people ususally mean when they say this.  But obviously it is grammatically incorrect to use the adjective as a direct object...except in this case, since it is an accepted usage to use a number of adjectives as direct objects of "feel".

Oh my goodness. If you don't even know what a copula and predicate adjective are, then you really shouldn't be lecturing anyone about grammar. Copulas (also called linking verbs) do not take objects, because they are not transitive. As you said in the other thread, they often serve as simple function words to connect the subject to the complement. "Bad" is an adjective that describes the subject, "I."

It is absolutely grammatical because you can substitute different words from the same parts of speech, and the sentence would still work. You could say "I feel sick" or "I am bad," and these are both grammatically correct.

Except that the exception itself is not a matter of grammer, it is not systematic, it is an arbitrary convention derived from the chaotic individual choices of thousands of people using the language without much attention to the underlying structure.

It is possible to use a very simple English grammer to say everything you need to say, and avoid contradicting any rules.  You'll sound silly, but you can do it if you want.  It isn't necessary to break the basic rules, but we all do it and there isn't any apparent reason to get too worked up over it.

But I think it's silly to enshrine all the "accepted usages" as being part of the grammer.  They're not, and that's that.  Even if it is accepted usage to use the term "grammer" to mean "accepted usage", that is merely a recursion.  Calling "the way everyone does things" a "system" doesn't actually make it a system, it merely means that you lose the concept of "system".

English has pretty much lost the concept of "grammer" because of people that insist they never say or write anything that is ungrammatical.  It's all a bunch of BS.

It's painfully obvious that you don't even know what grammar is. You don't seem to know the real difference between grammar and usage, and you don't seem to know where grammatical rules actually come from. In fact, it seems that you have the concepts of grammar and usage completely reversed; grammar is the descriptive, nonjudgmental set of rules for how people actually use the language, while usage is the set of prescriptive, judgmental set of rules for how people should use the language.

Oh, and saying "English has lost the concept of grammar" is the real BS here. Language is not language if it doesn't have rules. But that doesn't mean that those rules aren't subject to change at any time.

[Annie Subjunctive]

I told you.

[Uchiha Itachi]

If the usage of "more important" is under the same system as "obviously" or "unfortunately", then why is it not "more importantly"?

Because it isn't a systematic rule.

And "feel" may take the usages of a copula in certain cases, but it isn't always permitted to serve as one.  Besides, "I feel bad" doesn't quite mean "I am bad/unwell", or even "I sense I am bad/unwell".  It means "I feel bad"...that is, it is an expression with a unique and highly variable implication (not quite as unique and highly variable as some phrases, but certainly not something for which one could easily find an exact equivalent).  Consider related uses, like the injunction "Don't feel bad."

All that, I'm going to apologize for what I'm about to say, in clarification of what I've been saying.

The field in which you are an expert is complete bullshit.

I didn't know that I was insulting your life's work by saying this, so I'm apologizing for it now.  And certainly, while my opinion may be less biased, yours is more "informed" (and yes, that brings up the relative value of which opinions count as being "informed").  That said, I'll go on being an unbeliever, and you can go on preaching your religion to whoever wants to hear it.  Since this is your board and I don't really feel that the preaching of grammer counts as the most pressing evil in the world today, I'll consent to avoid pressing the issue further, other than to point out that in the end all your arguments are appeals to self appointed authorities...including yourself.

Again, sorry.

[Porter]

Uchiha -- you seem to show disdain for rules of grammer being based on either 1) how English is actualy spoken or 2) what authorities say is proper.  What, in your mind, constitutes proper grammer?  That it systematically follows the rules?

The other day my 5-year-old asked if I had buyed something.  I corrected him and told him that I bought it.  I thinks for a while, and says "but buyed makes sense".  Yes, buyed as the past tense of buy makes every kind of sense.  Except for the fact that it's wrong.

[Annie Subjunctive]

I appreciate a standardized grammar because it helps us better understand literature of the past.  Sure, we can just go with the way people say things, but then the written word becomes obsolete in a couple decades.

I'm not being stuffy by trying to understand these burdensome grammar rules that the Man uses to keep us down - I'm learning to better understand the English language and am better educated thanks to the fact that I can understand archaic forms of English.

[Jonathon]

If the usage of "more important" is under the same system as "obviously" or "unfortunately", then why is it not "more importantly"?

Because it isn't a systematic rule.

Actually, it's not entirely accurate to say that it works just like those other adverbs. It's a rather new construction, so it seems to be in a state of flux until speakers finally decide which one fits their mental grammar best.

Most usage books nowadays say that both the adjective and the adverb are correct. The argument against "importantly" was that it didn't modify anything in the sentence, so it must be grammatically incorrect. The problem is, "important" doesn't modify anything, either. Sentence adverbs often work that way, though: they don't modify any particular word, but rather the meaning of the sentence as a whole.

And "feel" may take the usages of a copula in certain cases, but it isn't always permitted to serve as one.  Besides, "I feel bad" doesn't quite mean "I am bad/unwell", or even "I sense I am bad/unwell".  It means "I feel bad"...that is, it is an expression with a unique and highly variable implication (not quite as unique and highly variable as some phrases, but certainly not something for which one could easily find an exact equivalent).  Consider related uses, like the injunction "Don't feel bad."

Of course it's not always a copula verb, but when it's followed by an adjective that modifies the subject, it is. And yes, it's true that the meaning of "I feel bad" is somewhat idiomatic, but I wouldn't call it "unique and highly variable." Actually, I don't see how it's variable at all. It seems to have a pretty precise meaning, even if it is hard to put into other words.

All that, I'm going to apologize for what I'm about to say, in clarification of what I've been saying.

The field in which you are an expert is complete bullshit.

I didn't know that I was insulting your life's work by saying this, so I'm apologizing for it now.  And certainly, while my opinion may be less biased, yours is more "informed" (and yes, that brings up the relative value of which opinions count as being "informed").  That said, I'll go on being an unbeliever, and you can go on preaching your religion to whoever wants to hear it.  Since this is your board and I don't really feel that the preaching of grammer counts as the most pressing evil in the world today, I'll consent to avoid pressing the issue further, other than to point out that in the end all your arguments are appeals to self appointed authorities...including yourself.

Again, sorry.

I'm really not even sure what you're saying in that second-to-last paragraph. Who said that this is some religion that I preach? And you don't believe in grammar? What's that supposed to mean?

I'll just end by saying that you obviously don't understand my arguments or my life's work. I'm not the self-appointed, evangelical grammar nazi that you're making me out to be. You're getting thrashed in an argument because you know next to nothing about the subject, so you take a couple of cheap parting shots to try to misrepresent my position and undermine my authority. I guess that saves a lot more face than just admitting that you were wrong and didn't know what you were talking about.

Oh, and that was the lamest, most insincere apology I've ever seen.

[Uchiha Itachi]

No it isn't.  You're just being snippy.

But I'm glad to hear that this isn't really your life's work or anything like that.  The way you appealed to your credentials as a way of ending the argument just made it look that way.

All I'm really saying is that I can understand Brinestone's loss of faith in the ideal of a fixed and logically consistent grammer.  Or rather, I'm saying that I laud it, really...anyway, just throwing in my vote on the side of those that don't want to be bothered with grammer.

Clearly, I shouldn't have allowed it to become an argument over whether or not the study of grammer actually has any value, but I really didn't know that anyone here was that invested in grammer for its own sake.  I was just expressing the position I hold on the language, that English is not highly systematic and therefore it cannot be fully described by the rules of its grammer.  And I really am sorry that it caused such a fuss, I just thought it would be best if I explained exactly what I was saying.

Of course, since no one here seems capable of understanding English...  I'm kidding, of course.

What I mean is that since nobody here seems willing to understand what I'm saying, and since Brinestone has appealled to be readmitted into the faith, I don't have anything more to say on the grand philosophical subject.

On lesser subjects, I still think that "more important" serves as a shorthand for "which is more important" or something similar.  But that argument would go into a more etymological type area of tracing the history of a phrase's morphology and usage.  On a similar note, I don't think that "feel" was a copula yet back when "I feel bad" came into currency.  Or rather, you can use any verb as a copula, it just sounds wrong until people get used to the usage.  But that's getting back to larger questions that we don't feel like discussing.

[Trisha]

I just find it distressing that Brinestone is being expected to learn grammar from this professor and there is no higher authority to which the professor is accountable.  At least, that's what I think I gathered from the first couple of posts.  I say just keep you head down and say "Yes sir" and then get on with your life.

Annie, I think you mean "Would that the subjunctive mood may return."

And what in the GreNME is with dissecting the whole post in little quotes?  

[rivka]

I'm sure I'll get labeled a spelling nazi for this, but PLEASE: there is NO "e" in grammar!

[Porter]

Rivka, you're a spelling nazi.

ACK!  I originally spelled it as "your a spelling nazi" to be funny, but I couldn't stand it, so I corrected it.  I guess I'm somewhat of a nazi myself.

[Brinestone]

Hooray! *claps for all the spelling/grammar nazis*