-1

I have an answer to a question Tiger eats rabbit. What would be the question for this?

Tiger eats who?

Tiger eats whom?

Which is correct among these two sentences?

user76586
  • 1

2 Answers2

0

Either one would be acceptable to most speakers. However, a prescriptivist grammarian would insist on the whom version, and this is certainly the safest answer in the context of a written piece.

Erik Kowal
  • 26,806
-1

This question would be answered spontaneous to your gaining knowledge in cases of nouns.

In English, cases apply only to pronouns.

The cases you are concerned with is the accusative and oblique cases. They are the transitive-objects cases.

  • I(nominative case) kissed him (accusative case).
  • She (nominative case) gave him (oblique case) the ball (the accusative object).
  • She (nominative case) gave the ball (the accusative object) him (oblique case).

Since the early 1990s, due to strong influence from American English, the use of whom had started to be considered archaic by some quarters. But if you, like I, prefer persisting in the precision of using whom, here is the formula for figuring when whom can be deployed in your speech.

Replace your who vs whom with he vs him.

Tiger eats him? vs Tiger eats he?

To who it may concern vs To whom it may concern:

  • To him, it may concern vs To he, it may concern.

For whom the bells toll vs For who the bells toll (pardon the twist at Hemingway's title):

  • the bells toll for him vs the bells toll for he
Blessed Geek
  • 9,623
  • This is essentially the prescriptive a priori assumption that English has an overt case system and the traditional attempt to shoehorn usage of the language into that assumption. But it's really not clear what the merits are of assuming that English works in this way, and it's definitely not clear that English speakers consistently use 'whom' in the way you describe. – Neil Coffey May 19 '14 at 10:04
  • Why would you vote me down??? That is the reasonable way to decide use of who vs whom. – Blessed Geek May 19 '14 at 10:04
  • 1
    I do also wonder why you say "since the early 1990s" as though this some kind of new phenomenon: hasn't "whom" essentially been moribund for centuries? – Neil Coffey May 19 '14 at 10:05
  • "For centuries" is an obvious hyperbole. Use of hyperbole normally indicates a weak argument exists behind it. Non-US English use of "whom" has been active even up to the 1990s. Even now. – Blessed Geek May 19 '14 at 10:07
  • I wish to purport that I understand your crusade against cases in English, in particular your crusade against whom. Not unlike the Tamil crusade in expunging all traces of Sanskrit influence from Tamil. – Blessed Geek May 19 '14 at 10:13
  • 1
    I don't have a "crusade against cases in English", so much as a crusade in favour of trying to describe languages accurately. The reality of the way 'whom' is used (and indeed the nature of oppositions such as he~him etc) is much more complex and quite different to the situation you describe. – Neil Coffey May 19 '14 at 10:30
  • It's a simple operation. Is the word anal, or pedantic? The test is good enough for anyone to tell when to use whom vs who. – Blessed Geek May 19 '14 at 12:04