0

The sentence is “she understands who amongst their trio is tasked with protecting everything.” Should it be “whom” because the person is receiving the task of protecting, or “who” because they do the action of protecting?

Thank you.

PandaSniffles
  • 3
  • 1
    Let me answer a question with a question. Would you say "She understands he is tasked with protecting everything," or "She understands him is tasked with protecting everything"? – Dave Dec 24 '23 at 03:26
  • He = who, I take it? This trick works even though it changes the sentence to test the theory? – PandaSniffles Dec 24 '23 at 03:38
  • Yes, it's who that you need here. I think the trick works. I tried not to change the sentence too much. – Dave Dec 24 '23 at 03:54
  • Thank you for your help! – PandaSniffles Dec 24 '23 at 04:22
  • The point is that the subject of the subordinate interrogative clause "who amongst their trio is tasked with protecting everything" is the NP "who amongst their trio", the subject of which is a personal pronoun. Subject personal pronouns take nominative case, thus "who" is correct. – BillJ Dec 24 '23 at 09:06
  • 2
    Does this answer your question? What rules make “Remember me, who am your friend” grammatical? where the more obvious example 'I don't know who did that.' is given '(nominative because even though 'who' is the object of 'know', it is the subject of 'did' and it is loyal to the relative clause)' – Edwin Ashworth Dec 24 '23 at 14:26

1 Answers1

0

It isn't relevant who is "receiving" or "doing" an action. What matters is the syntactic role that the noun phrase "who amongst their trio" plays in the interrogative clause "who amongst their trio is tasked with protecting everything." In this case, we see that "who amongst their trio" is the subject of that clause; it plays the same role that "He" does in "He is tasked with protecting everything." Since it is the subject, only who would make sense; using whom here would be incorrect.

alphabet
  • 18,217