whoever in Re: alt exhibit
On Wed, 5 Sep 2007, Diana Bloomfield wrote: Wait. Maybe that would be thanks to who ever did that, not whom ever. Is it whom or who? I think the correct use is who. Not sure, but thanks anyway.Diana, by my reading, your instincts correct, tho a change of detail might make it clearer. In this usage it would be one word: "whomever," or "whoever," and although (in the New York Times for instance) we find it wrong as often as right, if not more often, my reading is that..... ... "whoever" is the subject of the prepositional phrase, that is the phrase says "whoever did that" and the thanks go to them. The entire phrase is therfore the object of the preposition "to," but the word "whoever" remains its subject. (Which I can visualize because when we diagramed (sp?) sentences in the 8th grade, the prepositional phrase had a line of its own descending from the main sentence diagram by way of the preposition). So "whoever" is indeed correct, but lotsaluck. Examples of "whom" might be "To whom do I owe thanks?" And there's the famous New Yorker cartoon -- a hand is holding a telephone receiver out of which we see the words "whom shall I say is calling?" emerge. That of course is wrong. One might correctly answer, "Whoever you say is calling, I'm busy." Is that perfectly clear? Judy On Sep 5, 2007, at 7:43 PM, Daniel Williams wrote:zphoto@montana.net wrote:Hi all, There are a number of people on this list in this show--I was offlist for a bit while at Penland and don't know if someone announced it, but here is the link that shows the exhibit. Chris http://www.c4fap.org/exhibitions/2007Alternative/index.htmI see the page has now been altered to show the process used. Dan Williams
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