Another rant about ‘off of’ rather than ‘on’
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First evidence that birds tweet using grammar
So, better than most humans then?
(I’ll get my hat)
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I’m sure this means there are avian language purists and avian grammar nazis too.
I wonder if they have a language guide to work off of of.
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The short answer is: yes.
As a side note: I’m more comfortable with the term grammar pests.
Enough actual nazis that need to be taken care of.
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I suspect they need to work on it.
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I was wondering when you’d respond to that!
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I’m always on it!
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Until recently Cad Bane was pretty unstoppable, but in The Bad Batch, a young Fennec Shand was able to shut him down. Shand now works for Boba Fett, whom was once tutored by Bane.
Not sure if this is a typo or a classic case of hypercorrection using the accusative whom because it is semantically the undergoer of “tutor” even though it is clearly not the subject of the clause:
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I’m always surprised how hard it is for native English speakers to correctly use archaic forms such as who/whom or thou/thine. Using the correct corresponding form comes naturally to me as a native speaker of a language that still does that.
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I’m not sure people have a conceptual problem with the difference between “thou” and “thine” (which just map directly to “you” and “yours”). But yes, native English speakers seem to struggle with “thou” vs. “thee” and “who” vs. “whom”, and that is quite interesting.
If you consider the sentences “X hit the target” and “the target was hit by X”, in modern English you do have to consder declension when filling in the value of X.
- If X is “I”, “we”, “he”, “she” or “they” in the first sentence, then you need a different word in the second, and native speakers make that substitution automatically.
- If X is “Cletus” in the first sentence, then it happens to also be “Cletus” in the second sentence, but at some level we must nonetheless be keeping track that the noun is in the oblique case (“Cletum”), because we could switch to pronouns at any moment, which no one has trouble with.
- And yet, if X is “who” or “thou”, some native speakers apparently trip over the need to use a different word in the second sentence.
It raises the question of whether or not English words have a “hidden”, mental inflection even though most of the grammatical case does not change their outward form. Perhaps this is a difference between speakers, or maybe I am wrong about how my own language machinery works?
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Yeah it actually kind of does, doesn’t it!?
I’m also kind of fascinated by why it’s so hard for so many people. I remember when I first encountered thee/thou/thine in writing and I recall just sort of adding it to the same “set” of rules as other pronouns and just accepting that I’d have to memorize another cluster of them if I was going to understand what I was reading. But maybe because people don’t encounter them much and remember that there’s something different about them it causes a fumble? Or maybe because there’s already so much misuse that people just kind of encounter them in awkward places and are never forced to consider it? I dunno…
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“Whom” isn’t archaic. I think a majority of native English speakers would find 1-3 bad.
- *To who should I send this letter?
- *With who should I do the project?
- *I saw the man to who the prize was given.
On the other hand with in situ questions, I think most US English speakers at least would prefer 4 over 5.
- You gave the prize to who?
- ? You gave the prize to whom?
- Who did you give the prize to?
7.? Whom did you give the prize to?
I suspect that a great deal of the issue is that English accusative rules are actually quite weird. There is the big hypercorrection thing with “me” where “I” is preferred by most speakers in any context where the word isn’t immediately proceeded by a preposition, i.e. “They gave the prize to John and I.” This explains why most speakers prefer 6 to 7.
(Doing descriptive linguistics here. Anyone who complains that those people are all bad and ignorant can fuck off.)
With such a weak notion of accusativeness it isn’t really surprising that “whom” follows the same basic pattern of being preferred when immediately proceeded by a prep but excluded otherwise. On the other hand, it still doesn’t account for 5. If you were a transformationalist you might argue that “who” is preferred in in situ questions because the speaker is somehow anticipating fronting the question word to form 6.
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Yeah, it could be sort of like how people get tangled up with left/right and credit/debit – the concept is simple, but knowing that there is a potential way to get it wrong makes you second-guess yourself.
There is the added gotcha that some old texts use “mine” and “thine” in place of “my” and “thy”, which doesn’t help.
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There’s so much redundancy though maybe? Because speaking naturally and informally I’d show no surprise at hearing:
“who should I send this letter to?”
“who should I do the project with?”
“I saw the man who got the prize”
I wonder if there’s sort of a moment happening here where people are deciding whether or not to drop “whom” and at what register of speech it should matter if it’s going to stay around.
Full disclosure: I’m not even a hobby linguist I just find it kind of interesting how people write and speak… and English is the only language I know well enough to think about that way.
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There is. But as a German speaker it grates on me to not use “whom”. Whom and who are different words, end of story. I would no longer make them the same word as I would make they and them the same word.
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Interesting. I studied German in school up to the college level only and never used it so my grasp of it is abysmal, but I also grew up with exposure to a language in which the question of who/whom is completely moot when having a conversation (asl). I’m also abysmal at that language. So, honestly, I just kind of have a “damn communication is hard” kind of response, myself.
Yeah… I guess I’ve really had a lot of ambivalence towards who/whom over the years. Not sure what I think anymore about it.
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My recollection is that all question-words are in situ in ASL. Case marking in ASL is really hard to tease out because of all the “superphonetic” things like raised-eyebrows, shoulder posture etc.
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Yeah, exactly, I mean asl is inherently spatial in a way that English just… isn’t.
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