Timeline for Whom should I say is calling?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
18 events
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| Sep 16, 2022 at 3:35 | comment | added | Chaim | Yeah, just lending my little intuition to this game: all of the examples in the question should be "who," and the temptation of "whom" is just an association with sentences that would actually put an object-word in that position. "Whom should I say is calling?" superficially sounds parallel to "Whom should I say that to?" "That is the woman whom he claims has ruined his life" sounds parallel to "That is the woman whom he claims as his daughter." And so on. | |
| Sep 15, 2022 at 19:00 | history | edited | Glorfindel | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
broken link fixed
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| Jan 21, 2019 at 10:58 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | @KateBunting That’s changing the construction, turning “he claims” into a parenthetical. The fact that they are different constructions is clearly seen if you apply relativiser deletion: “This is the woman whom he claims stole” -> “This is the woman [] he claims stole”, but “This is the woman who, he claims, stole” -> ungrammatical “*This is the woman [], he claims, stole”. | |
| Jan 21, 2019 at 9:41 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | Actually, let me go back on that a bit: “I ask that he is calling” is borderline grammatical, but not quite. The complement clause of verbs like ask/request/demand are part of subjunctive constructions, so the verb should be in a subjunctive-compatible form; that means either a plain subjunctive (“that he call”) or some form of modal construction (“that he should call”, etc.). To some, a simple present tense (“that he calls”) is also acceptable, but I think a continuous form would be considered at least somewhat unacceptable by most speakers. | |
| Jan 21, 2019 at 9:41 | comment | added | Zebrafish | @JanusBahsJacquet Sorry, when I realized my example meant "request" instead of "inquire", I deleted it, of course you're right. | |
| Jan 21, 2019 at 9:36 | comment | added | Kate Bunting | I agree with Oxford Dictionaries (!). He claims could be separated from the rest of the sentence by commas or parentheses; the basic meaning is 'the elderly woman who has ruined his life'. | |
| Jan 21, 2019 at 9:25 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | @Zebrafish Yes, it is, and it is grammatical, but only when ask means ‘request’. Ask meaning ‘inquire’ cannot take a complement clause as its object (just like inquire cannot). | |
| Jan 21, 2019 at 9:00 | history | edited | Zebrafish | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 126 characters in body; edited title
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| Jan 21, 2019 at 8:56 | comment | added | Zebrafish | @JanusBahsJacquet Whoa, major mistake that slipped me, in my question title and once in the question I write "Whom should I ask is calling?" I mean "Whom should I say is calling?", which I write repeatedly in the question..... Jeez, I'm sorry, I don't know how many people took that the wrong way. I'm editing to those two instances to "say" from "ask", hope that doesn't move the goal posts too much. | |
| Jan 21, 2019 at 8:30 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | “Whom should I ask is calling?” doesn’t make any sense to me regardless of pronoun variant because ask (in the sense of ‘inquire’) doesn’t work like that. It’s assuming the embedded clause is “Should I ask/inquire that X is calling?”, which does not work: ask (inquire) cannot take a complement clause as its object. If you substitute say (as indeed you do later on in the question), then it becomes a meaningful, and quite common, sentence. | |
| Jan 21, 2019 at 7:06 | comment | added | Zebrafish | @RMac No, of course it doesn't sound right, that's why I marked it with (wrong). But there seems to be an extra clause there. To take the original example: "He is demanding £5,000 from the elderly woman whom he claims has ruined his life." You might say simplify and remove "he claims", then of course we have something ungrammatical, but you've removed a clause from the sentence that people seem to be saying can justify the use of the "whom" instead of "who", so the extra clause is essential. I'm just wondering if the calling example is analogous to the original example. | |
| Jan 21, 2019 at 6:24 | answer | added | JK2 | timeline score: 1 | |
| Jan 21, 2019 at 6:06 | comment | added | R Mac | Simplify. "Whom is calling?" Does it still sound right to you? | |
| Jan 21, 2019 at 6:06 | answer | added | herisson | timeline score: 2 | |
| Jan 21, 2019 at 5:31 | history | edited | Zebrafish | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
deleted 12 characters in body
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| Jan 21, 2019 at 5:25 | history | edited | Zebrafish | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
deleted 12 characters in body
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| Jan 21, 2019 at 4:39 | comment | added | tchrist♦ | I should say that you should say that he is calling and not that him is calling. :) | |
| Jan 21, 2019 at 4:11 | history | asked | Zebrafish | CC BY-SA 4.0 |