From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Thu Dec 14 1995 - 20:20:09 EST
At 5:10 PM 12/14/95, Bruce Terry wrote:
>On Thu, 14 Dec 1995, James D. Ernest wrote:
>
>>I beg the indulgence of list members for a question of English grammar.
>>Which is correct (grammatically):
>>
>>A: The Son of Man is the Messiah whom Jesus claims to be.
>> ^^^^
>>B: The Son of Man is the Messiah who Jesus claims to be.
>> ^^^
>>Analogously:
>>
>>A: Jesus claims to be him.
>> ^^^
>>B; Jesus claims to be he.
>>> ^^
>
>The correct usage is whom and him. The infinitive is a copula, which would
>usually take the subjective case, but the infinitive clause is filling an
>objective slot of the word claims, making it take the objective case. This
>can clearly be seen in the example:
>
> Peter claimed him to be the Messiah.
>
>One would not say in English:
>
> *Peter claimed he to be the Messiah.
I am utterly at a loss to understand the argument here, which I thought was
about ENGLISH, not GREEK grammar. Are you arguing, Bruce, that the
structure of the subordinate clause in English sentence A is really "XXX
Jesus claims HIMSELF to be"? i.e., that the English usage of claims implies
a reflexive pronoun in the accusative? I submit that "He claimed to be a
king" is very different from "They claimed him to be a king." In the former
sentence 'a king' is a simple predicate nominative,in the latter it is a
predicate accusative--or that's the way I'd understand it, even though the
English doesn't distinguish the case forms of the noun phrase, 'a king.'
Would you say,
"Whom do you claim to be?"
or
"Who do you claim to be?"?
Or reverse it and make it more emphatic (with voice intonation): would you say,
"You claim to be WHOM?"
or
"You claim to be WHO?"
Personally, I'll take the second form in instance: "Who do you claim to
be?" and "You claim to be WHO?"
>Having said that, I must note that although him is not crumbling before he,
>whom is being replaced in informal, and now to a certain extent even in
>formal, English by who. In two or three more decades, who will be both the
>subjective and objective forms and whom will be an archaic objective form.
This may be, but I am not ready to accept without a grimace what I hear
ever more frequently, nominative pronouns used as objects of a preposition:
"My son gave this present to I"
"Will you come with we to town?"
I've argued before and do believe that to some extent there is an
increasing expectation that the form of a pronoun to be expected AFTER a
verb is the accusative, regardless of whether the verb is a copula or a
transitive active verb. Thus, the established usage for some time now has
been:
"Do you recognize me?" BUT ALSO: "Toys R Us."
"Who's that knocking on my door?" "It's me."
All of this is utterly independent of Greek usage or analogy. It is a
matter of current standard (spoken) English.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:37:34 EDT