Grammar geekery

[annathepiper]

This point just got raised to me by gerimaple, proofing Chapter 18 of Faerie Blood for me. Consider the following sentence:

Our initial nervous winces at mistakes turned into snickers, which in turn became challenges to see who could throw who off beat by making outrageous faces at flubbed notes.

Is that grammatically correct? Or should it in fact be:

Our initial nervous winces at mistakes turned into snickers, which in turn became challenges to see who could throw whom off beat by making outrageous faces at flubbed notes.

Word's grammar checker thinks it should be option 1 (please, hold your snarky commentary about Word's grammar checker; yeah yeah yeah, I know, it's not perfect, but hey, it's the tool I've got); Geri thinks option 2. Me, I'm not sure. Anybody up for explaining to me which version is grammatically correct and why? Thanks in advance!

Comments

[me-fein.livejournal.com]

That's right!

only pronouns that are objects end in the letter "m" (whom, him, them)

[annathepiper]

Cool, thanks! And heh, cute icon. ^_^

[annathepiper]

It does indeed make sense. Thanks for chiming in!

[kieri.livejournal.com]

As the other two folks kindly posted already, it's 2. :)

"who" is the subject form, "whom" is the object form. Pretty much always, actually, but people make the mistake a lot so it's slowly shifting away from being used outside of non-academic/literary circles.

Another random note, the word "blond" is gender-dependent. A man is blond, a woman is blonde. Silly words appropriated from the French. :)

That said, "who could throw whom off beat" sounds a little awkward to me, possibly because "whom" is so proper and "off beat" is a little more modern. But it's gramatically right anyway. :)

[avram]

The adjective “offbeat” is slang for “unusual”, and I think it’s recent. But it looks like it’s being used here in the literal sense — the characters are trying to provoke each other into losing the beat of the music.

Anna, “off the beat” might keep readers from hearing the slang term instead of the literal.

[annathepiper]

You are quite correct, that's exactly what's happening. And that's a good suggestion, thanks! I think I'll work that in. :) I've tagged the sentence to be revisited when I make my final sweep before I print the manuscript.

[annathepiper]

Heh, I knew about the blond/blonde thing, yeah. As I recall, the same differentiation used to be made between brunet and brunette, too.

Thanks for your input! I've tagged that bit to be revisited on my final sweep.

[avram]

Don’t forget fiancé and fiancée!

[annathepiper]

Right, I'm pretty good at remembering that one, too--though it hasn't really come up yet in my prose. :)

[cats-haven.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think both are correct. MSWord's grammar checker didn't do anything with either statement or suggest changes when i tested it. Of course, we know how stupid MSWord can be heh

[annathepiper]

Yeah, and the grammar checker isn't consistent across versions, either; I'm using Word 2003 these days, and it's been behaving differently than Word 2000 did for me.

However, others on the thread seem to agree with you that both are correct, or else that option #2 is the one I want... but I'll decide what I want to do when I swing back around to get in all the reader comments. :) Thanks for chiming in!

[starsongky.livejournal.com]

Not sure why, but #2 sounds more appropriate to me. Something about "who" referring to a subject-type noun and "whom" to an object-type noun, maybe?

That's my best guess, no official advice intended.

[brightbeak.livejournal.com]

that is the way i parsed it :)

[annathepiper]

The majority opinion on the thread appears to be that #2 is indeed correct, though there is a minority opinion that both are--and the vital point that since I am writing in first person, the real priority is what my character would actually SAY in her narration. :) You did hit upon the correct reason for #2, though, based on what everyone else has to say!

And thanks for chiming in! :)

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

When in doubt, recast the sentence to use a second person substution (he:she/him:her) that will answer the question, each time, every time.

In this case it would be her/him, and so whom is the right answer.

I recommend using he/him, because the m is the answer.

TK

[annathepiper]

Cool, thank you very much for chiming in! :)

[brightbeak.livejournal.com]

if you can get your hands on a latin book by *wheelock* and check out reflexive&relative pronouns, the explanation there will give you both the answer and the explanation better than ANY english grammar book ever could

wait, just found an annotated place for wheelock by a dude
http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/Wheelock-Latin/lat17.txt
relative pronouns was what i was after, not reflexive! doh!
just remember that latin declines nouns (sorta like conjugating verbs): nom = subject, gen = possessive, and acc = direct object
(dat = indirect object, abl = somehting i cant remember right now, and voc = exclamation)
ièm thinking whom is the correct response according to that...

[kitchengrrl.livejournal.com]

And herein lies the key to the puzzle. When educators in their wisdom started teaching the English language in schools as a subject back in the late 1800s, no one had ever written grammer rules for English. So they appropriated what they had grammer rules for: Latin. o_O

English ain't Latin. You can split infinitives in English anytime you want (to boldly go), but in Latin it CAN'T happen because an infinitive is one word. You can end a sentence with a preposition because to not do so is sometimes awkward, a construction up with which I will not put! :D

As to who/whom, I know I've heard this question answered before and can never remember the whole explanation. The answer boils down to usage, in which case, both are correct. Personally, I think the sentance flows nicely either way.

[brightbeak.livejournal.com]

i learned more english grammar in the 2 full-yr latin courses i took in university than i did in ALL the English courses i took, COMBINED!
and folks wonder why i ended up in the writing lab while doing my masters degree! heh!
latin IS more restrictive in word useages, BUT at the same time, once you have learned the correct way to use the words in the sentence/structure, it is easier to apply to english :)
any child i spawn SHALL be taking latin from an early age! period!

[annathepiper]

The answer boils down to usage, in which case, both are correct. Personally, I think the sentance flows nicely either way.

And thanks for that little bit of feedback! :) caligogreywings agrees with you that both usages are correct, though I'm still undecided as to what I'll do with it. I'll make the call when I come back around and deal with all the comments my helpful readers (THANKS GUYS!) have been giving me!

[annathepiper]

Cool, thanks. :)

(Explanation provided elsewhere on the thread about nominative vs. accusative case made sense to me, though--I remembered more of that from German than I did from English grammar classes when I was a kid, as it happened. ;) )

[brightbeak.livejournal.com]

well, even tho latin grammar is different from english grammar, it does really help in the elucidation of various word forms. it just helps take the 'WTF?!" option right out of there :)
bb

[annathepiper]

I'd heard before about Latin being useful in that respect, yeah. Never took it myself--though as I recall I didn't even really have the option.

[starfallz.livejournal.com]

Well, I learned something today. :D

[annathepiper]

Ain't LJ just grand for that? ^_^

[avram]

This looks like something being said or written by a character, which means you also have to take into account which word the character would use.

[annathepiper]

This is a most excellent point; thanks for bringing it up! Kendis is generally well-spoken and grammatically correct, but on the other hand, a somewhat rambly sentence like this wouldn't be out of character for her either. :)

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think this trumps the question of pronoun case. I haven't read the whole manuscript in any form, but as I recall from the parts I did read, Kendis had a very informal voice, full of colloquialisms and direct addresses to the reader. Despite her fine education, I think "whom" would disrupt the reader's sense of narrative cohesion just a little.

[annathepiper]

Yeah, Kendis is well-educated, but she speaks geek--every single geek I know, despite being well-educated, has that very informal voice. And will therefore not be grammatically correct all the time!

I shall have to ponder if I'll keep this sentence the way it is. :)

[cafiorello.livejournal.com]

Option B is correct.

The one you are throwing off is the direct object, and therefore must be in the accusative case rather than the nominative case. One way to check this is to substitute other pronouns to see if it sounds right or not: "to see if he could throw him off" sounds right; "to see if he could throw he off" sounds wrong. "Him" and "whom" are both accusative case.

Cathy

[cafiorello.livejournal.com]

Sorry, too much of a grammar geek; I should have read the other comments before replying.

English is an inflected language, like Latin; we do decline our nouns/pronouns, just not very much! Studying Latin is incredibly helpful, but studying any inflected language will help your English. German works!

Cathy

[annathepiper]

Thanks for chiming in! And no worries about not having looked at the other comments first; it's very helpful to me to have the question so solidly confirmed from a bunch of different sources. :)

And I really ought to work on my German some more, but I haven't had the time! Maybe after I get this round of editing out of the way....

[caligogreywings.livejournal.com]

Both options are correct. Whom, along with the possessive 's, are throwbacks from when we had inflectional morphemes. They are the only ones that survived, and whom is going the way of the dinosaurs. English is a changing language: 449 and the saxon invasion brought the germanic influence; 1066 and the norman invasion brought 10,000 new french and latin words, mostly in religion and government; the Great Vowel Shift changed our vowels to A, E, I, O, U (and sometimes Y, though that is a throwback from the celtic influence); English used to not be SubjectVerbObject; and inflectional morphemes have all but died out.

[annathepiper]

Cool, thanks for the input. I'm still thinking about what I want to do with that sentence; as was pointed out to me elsewhere on the thread, the really important thing here is what Kendis, my narrator, would actually say. Whether or not she is grammatically correct would be a secondary consideration. But it's cool to know these things regardless!