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I can run faster than _____. (1) him (2) he?

I am confused about the usage of the words 'we' and 'us'. I am using a Princeton Review 11 SAT tests 2011 edition, practice test 7, section 6, number 29 (just in case anyone actually had that book).

This question was a "find the incorrect word or phrase in the following section" question. For those of you who don't know, this kind of question gives you a sentence. Four different phrases or words are underlined in that sentence and labeled A, B, C, and D respectively. The objective is to find the phrase that is incorrectly used. The particular question I need help with says:

As finalists, Mark and I were both shocked by the decision; it seemed to us that the winner of the contest was far less talented than we.

A: both shocked
B: it seemed
C: far less
D: we
E: No error

So of course, everything seemed right till I got to that last word. My thinking was to use 'us' instead of 'we'. However, the answer in the back of the book says the answer is:

E. There is no error in the sentence as written. The we in (D) may sound strange, but the subject pronoun is correct here.

Can someone please explain this to me? Why am I wrong in saying that the word us should have been used instead?

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Sidd Singal
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  • It's a trick question: "we" and "us" are both correct. – Peter Shor Sep 30 '12 at 21:21
  • @PeterShor What would disqualify "we" from being used as opposed to "us"? What if the sentence was "He was smarter than we"? Is this still correct usage? – Sidd Singal Sep 30 '12 at 21:27
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    I assume that the reason that you can put in "we" for the original sentence is ellipsis: it's short for "was far less talented than we (were)". So you can do it anytime that there's an elidable word after the "we". When is that? I don't know the exact rules. And personally, I don't like dropping the were in either sentence. – Peter Shor Sep 30 '12 at 21:34
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    @PeterShor Thank you for your response. That is interesting and agreeably annoying. – Sidd Singal Sep 30 '12 at 21:37
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    This could be a duplicate of http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/3447/i-can-run-faster-than-1-him-2-he and http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/80132/he-is-better-than-1-i-2-i-am –  Sep 30 '12 at 21:39
  • @DavidWallace Great! Didn't know how to search for this kind of question. Much appreciated =) – Sidd Singal Sep 30 '12 at 21:58
  • Words fail me as to how appalling this is...!!! – Neil Coffey Oct 01 '12 at 01:13

1 Answers1

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This is one of those messy situations the exam writers should know better than to dump you into.

Very rigorous judges have long held that constructions of the type "X is better than Y" (substitute your own comparative for 'better') should be parsed as elliptical reductions of "X is better than Y is", and therefore require Y to be realized in the nominative case, if that's distinct from the objective (which is only the case with the pronouns "I", "he", "she", "we" and "they". That's the "rule" which the exam requires you to follow.

Unhappily for those rigorous judges, the "rule" is not, and never has been, followed in the language-as-she-is-actually-spoken. In ordinary speech virtually everybody has virtually always said "She's better than me", "He's better than her, "I'm better than him", "We're better than them", and "They're better than us". That's the "rule" recognized by most descriptive linguists; and many people who offer advice on how to say stuff promote that rule.

So there's a fundamental disagreement between two schools of prescriptive grammarians: which "rule" should you follow?

This will probably sort itself out on the "me/him/her/us/them" side by the time you retire. But right now you're stuck in the middle.

The "I/he/she/we/they" rule is a bad one. But you're applying for admission to a discourse community which very largely observes it; so choke down your annoyance and follow their rules until you have enough seniority to follow your own rules.

Just wait for them to die and you'll be fine.

StoneyB on hiatus
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    +1 for "choke down your annoyance and follow their rules until you have enough seniority to follow your own rules." I just want to see if anyone else has anything else to say before accepting this answer. Thank you! – Sidd Singal Sep 30 '12 at 22:02
  • I like Stoney's answer. Fact is, the SAT, TOEFL, TOEIC, and almost all other standardized English tests ask for answers that conform to the "rules" of formal written English and not spoken English, which has precious few rules. That means that the Princeton SAT book is formally and prescriptively correct, Peter Schor is de facto correct about spoken English ("Both are correct"--I'd say "idiomatic"), and English, like all other written languages, is very schizo. We need a corpus called The 3 Billion Faces of English. Read that bible and you'll know all the "rules". :-) –  Sep 30 '12 at 23:27
  • @BillFranke And by the time you've learned them a lot of them will have changed. – StoneyB on hiatus Sep 30 '12 at 23:30
  • Yep, their speakers/writers will have died. –  Sep 30 '12 at 23:32
  • N.B. Just to be clear, there's nothing intrinsically more "rigorous" about using either pronoun: it's simply an arbitrary choice. The exam question may as well ask: "Which is correct, a green door on a pink house or a pink door on a green house?". – Neil Coffey Oct 01 '12 at 01:21
  • Incidentally (though it doesn't particularly matter anyway), I have a feeling that historic usage is actually that both pronouns have been used in such cases since at least Shakespeare's time and possibly since Old English (i.e. for a thousand years if not more). – Neil Coffey Oct 01 '12 at 01:24
  • @NeilCoffey As to rigor, the Classicists require one form, the Demoticists mostly allow either. Historically, your feeling is corroborated by fact. – StoneyB on hiatus Oct 01 '12 at 01:54
  • I don't think the question of "rigor" is relevant. More important is the correct answer on an international standardized English test. EFL/ESL students want to know how to answer TOEFL, TOEIC, and IELTS questions like this one. Native speakers of English want to know how to answer SAT, GRE, GMAT, and LSAT questions like this one. Y'all're too involved in the politics of English to understand what students of English are interested in. They have different concerns. I think you do them a grave disservice by not understanding their POV. They don't care what Shakespeare said or wrote. –  Oct 01 '12 at 14:47
  • @BillFranke I quite understand the students' POV--that's why I advised OP to follow the "rule". I tried also to explain that he was quite right to be troubled by the "rule", because I think you also do a great disservice to students if you present an answer as authoritative when in fact the "authorities" disagree. OP is clearly a competent writer who needs and deserves something more than useful lies. – StoneyB on hiatus Oct 01 '12 at 15:14
  • @Stoney: Yes, my apologies for misrepresenting you. I agree that authorities don't agree. I've complained often enough that there are no real rules for English outside of ad hoc style manuals & the internalized grammars in native speakers (idiolect grammars) heads. I used to tell all my EFL students that the tests want this answer but that native speakers find all these other answers perfectly acceptable. The only useful answer, it seems to me, is: This is what the test makers want, but that's how native speakers actually write and speak. I don't think that's a lie. It's chaos. :-) –  Oct 01 '12 at 15:24
  • @BillFranke I concur with every word of this, except that "there are no real rules". Language is nothing but rules. The tricky part is finding out what they are, and which rule applies when! – StoneyB on hiatus Oct 01 '12 at 15:37
  • @Stoney: I find that the only "rule" that works for me is What works is best. Trouble is, it's an ex post facto judgment. Precedent may help define the rules that usually work, though. If there really were rules, wouldn't most of us agree on what was right and wrong? What we all agree on isn't disputed, so it's not interesting but trivial. Everything else, it seems to me, is purely personal preference. But I'm biased that way. –  Oct 01 '12 at 15:50
  • This helps with 'nominative' and 'objective' : http://www.dailywritingtips.com/what-is-dative-case/ –  Jul 01 '14 at 11:46