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"Would you give my extra points to whoever needs them the most?" Should whoever be whomever? My "opponent" in this discussion is using grammatical terms that I find unique.

tchrist
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Michael Owen Sartin
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    There is no indirect object. The object of the preposition to, which is not an indirect object, is not a word at all. It is the *entire clause* whoever needs them most. You have to analyse these looking at actual syntactic constituents, not just a word at a time. You have to look at structures. This question has been answered many times before on this site. Even as a real, actual indirect object the clause doesn’t change: “Please give whoever just called all my points.” That's because the clause needs a subject. There is no single word that is the object: it’s the entire clause. – tchrist Feb 28 '20 at 01:56
  • Duplicate of: http://english.stackexchange.com/q/14182 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/16024 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/44893 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/56514 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/84376 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/110181 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/121043 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/121073 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/144792 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/145483 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/147747 and many more. – tchrist Feb 28 '20 at 02:03

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