Who (pronoun)

[3] "The first occurrences of wh-relatives date from the twelfth century (with the possible exception hwær (see Kivimaa 1966: 35)).

"[4] Today, relative whose can still refer to non-persons (e.g., the car whose door won't open).

do not presuppose anything about number in possible responses: "I want some cake", or "All of us want some"; and "A rabbit is in the bag", or "Five coins and a bus ticket".

It has long been common, particularly in informal English, for the uninflected form "who" to be used in both cases, thus replacing "whom" in the contexts where the latter was traditionally used.

In 1975, S. Potter noted in Changing English that, "nearly half a century ago Edward Sapir predicted the demise of "whom", showing at great length that it was doomed because it was 'psychologically isolated' from the objective pronouns me, us, him, her, them on the one hand, and the invariables which, what, that and where, when, how, why on the other.

Lasnik and Sobin argue that surviving occurrences of "whom" are not part of ordinary English grammar, but the result of extra-grammatical rules for producing "prestige" forms.

[9] According to Mair, the decline of "whom" has been hastened by the fact that it is one of relatively few synthetic (inflected) remnants in the principally analytical grammar of Modern English.

[12] Mair notes that: "'whom' is moribund as an element of the core grammar of English, but is very much alive as a style marker whose correct use is acquired in the educational system [, where it is taught].

[The use of "whom"] is highly restricted, but rather than disappear entirely, the form is likely to remain in use for some time to come because of its overt prestige in writing.

Retention of the 'who'–'whom' distinction often co-occurs with another stylistic marker of formal or "prestige" English – avoidance of the stranded preposition.

For example: In relative clauses, movement of the preposition further allows "who" to be replaced by "that" or removed entirely: In the types of English in which "whom" is used (which are generally the more formal varieties, as described in the section above), the general grammatical rule is that "who" is the subjective (nominative) form, analogous to the personal pronouns "I", "he", "she", "we", "they", while "whom" is the objective (oblique) form, analogous to "me", "him", "her", "us" and "them".

or the noun clause "who the captain of the team is" (we know it is a noun clause because it replaces the word "something") is the same regardless of whether the original placement of the unknown person was before or after "be" (is): A problem sometimes arises in constructions like this: Use of "who" here is normal, and to replace it with 'whom' would be grammatically incorrect, since the pronoun is the subject of "was", not the object of "say".

[15] More examples are given below: Doubts can also arise in the case of free relative clauses, formed with who(m), who(m)ever or who(m)soever.

[18] Similarly: In sentences of this type, as with the "subject whom" examples above, use of whom(ever) is sometimes found in places where it would not be expected grammatically, due to the relative complexity of the syntax.