Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 August 9

= August 9 =

Demonym - Englishman, Frenchman, Spaniard, Scotsman, etc.
Why are some demonyms so gender-specific and others not? There are Englishman, Scotsman, Welshman, Frenchman, and Chinaman. Then, there are German man, Russian man, Korean man, and American man. Note the latter list has spaces between the ethnic demonyms and gender. Why? What accounts for the difference? 71.79.234.132 (talk) 01:01, 9 August 2015 (UTC) Sleigh (talk) 12:45, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
 * You have used the wrong demonyms: English, French, Scottish, Welsh and Chinese.
 * Why are they wrong? 71.79.234.132 (talk) 13:46, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Damn. @Sleigh, all these years, I have getting famous joke formula wrong. So it should be "An English, an Irish, and a Scottish walk into a bar...."? KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( もしもし！ ) 14:28, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

FWIW "Scot" is correct. Collect (talk) 15:22, 9 August 2015 (UTC)


 * To answer the IP's actual question, without all the politically correct special pleading, consider that for quite a long period of earlier modern history, an Englishman might meet an Irishman, Welshman, Dutchman, Scotsman or Frenchman, as his kingdom bordered those lands. Even a Norseman!  But Russians and Arabs and Koreans were ever more exotic.  So the terms for people in bordering countries with who trade or war would be frequent over long periods of time would naturally evolve nativized compound names. μηδείς (talk) 04:51, 10 August 2015 (UTC)


 * The Roman empire was cosmopolitan.  So in York, for example, you would meet black people from Nubia.   With extensive trade and sailing ships there was plenty of contact.   Thus forms such as "Chinaman" and "Musselman". 78.149.122.51 (talk) 12:51, 10 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Some of it is probably traceable to euphony. Germanman, Americanman, Russianman, Koreanman are all a bit awkward to say, too. StevenJ81 (talk) 19:54, 10 August 2015 (UTC)


 * To follow up on Medeis's point, though: I suspect most of these coinages/constructions occurred during some particular interval of time. It would be interesting to know that. Until 1492 (pace the Vikings), there was no such thing as an American (Canadian, Brazilian, Mexican ...). At all. I'm not quite sure what someone in 15th-16th century England would have called someone from "the Germanies". And did people in Europe really know that Korea was a distinct place from China then? I'm really not trying to be flip about that at all; I just wonder if some of those nations didn't exist from the perspective of England until this sort of demonymic construction was passé. StevenJ81 (talk) 20:03, 10 August 2015 (UTC)


 * It should be pointed out that German is in a sense the oldest of such terms in the West, to wit Germanicus, but it comes from spear-man, not "man from the land of Ger". The root *man- is from PIE. μηδείς (talk) 20:59, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * That may or may not be related to an old version of 1st cousin: cousin-german. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:53, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Beyond the immediate area, demonyms are individualistic - Greek, Spaniard, Swede, Swiss.  This also applies to tribes generally - Bulgar, Dane, Mongol, Roma, Vandal etc.   It is this which lies behind expressions such as "the Turk" which some contributors to an earlier discussion considered was a construction intended to demean a people.   Moving further afield, the demonyms are of the normal -ese, -i or -(i)an variety. 92.19.28.56 (talk) 13:26, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

How is "Atlas V" pronounced predominantly in the Space Community?
Do most professionals at NASA, SpaceX, JPL, etc. say "Atlas five" or "Atlas vee"? 75.75.42.89 (talk) 01:29, 9 August 2015 (UTC)


 * The former. Here is a video of last month's Atlas V launch where you can hear the ULA launch announcer pronounce it "Atlas Five" a few seconds in. -- ToE 01:41, 9 August 2015 (UTC)


 * That would be consistent with the Saturn V ("Saturn Five") rockets which launched the Apollo Moon missions. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:35, 9 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I heard people talking about the "George and Ivy" pub and thought it was something like George and Mildred, which must be the funniest TV comedy show which ever aired.  Walking one day I noticed the pub, and when I saw the picture on the inn sign I realised it was the "George IV".   That reminds me that the only thing I remember of my parents' conversations when I was very, very young was them mentioning "The Spring - Green Lady".   I wondered a lot about who she might be, then we moved away from the village and many years later, while consulting a hotel directory, I saw the village mentioned and right there was the name "The Spring - Green Lady".   It turned out that this was the name of an inn or pub. 80.44.166.96 (talk) 16:48, 9 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Sounds like a mondegreen.  → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 04:32, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Case Assignment in Fused Relatives Cross-Linguistically
In languages that have fused relatives where the relative words inflect for case, how does case assignment generally work? For example, I found a source that says in German, if the matrix and relative clauses assign the same case (or two different cases where there is syncretism), then use that inflection, otherwise look at the two cases assigned according to this order: Nominative - Accusitive - Dative - Genitive. If the relative clause assigns the case farther to the right, that case wins, but if the matrix clause assigns the case farther to the right, the construction is syntactically blocked. In English, there seem to be two camps: those who say the relative clause always governs, and those who say that conflict blocks the construction entirely in formal style (though informal style can always use "whoever", of course). So my question is a little open ended: is what I said above correct for German? What is the data for for English? (I understand there probably isn't a clear answer for English due to the moribund status of "whomever", but a survey of variation in actual usage should still be possible.) What was the rule in Latin? In Old English? In other languages where this issue arises? 2601:645:8101:54AA:B4AF:9577:4284:3EC7 (talk) 01:57, 9 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I imagine the lack of responses means everyone else is having as much trouble as I am figuring out what this means...could you give us some example sentences to help us understand? Adam Bishop (talk) 19:05, 9 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Sorry for being unclear. By "fused relative" I mean a construction like "what you want" in "what you want is impossible to get". These are sometimes also called "free relatives" or "nominal relatives". The word "what" doesn't inflect for case, but if it did the matrix clause (with verb "is") would indicate nominative while the relative clause (with verb "want") would indicate accusative. I'm asking how different languages resolve this conflict. In English it only comes up with "who(m)ever" - as in "I will tell who(m)ever asks", where "who(m)ever" is subject of ask but also head of a construction that is object of "tell". I'm more curious what the rule is in languages other than English (since English speakers don't really have a native intuition here). For example the source I found for German says *"Ich folge (wem/wen) ich bewundere" ("I follow whomever I adore") is ungrammatical with both dative "wem" and accusative "wen" because the matrix verb "folge" wants the dative while the relative verb "bewundere" wants the accusative, and the construction is syntactically blocked because the relative "loses" to the matrix. But "Wen Maria mag wird eingeladen" ("Who(m)ever Maria likes is invited") is grammatical because the relative clause selects accusative and the matrix clause selects nominative and accusative "beats" nominative when selected by the relative clause. I'm asking whether that's an accurate account of German and also how it works in other languages where this is an issue. (I did some research and it looks like - if I understand - Old English uses a special indeclinable word for fused relatives so maybe Old English isn't relevant here). 2601:645:8101:54AA:99C1:99FB:B2C8:162C (talk) 21:45, 9 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I found http://www-01.sil.org/linguistics/glossaryoflinguisticterms/WhatIsAMatrixSentence.htm and "English relative clause". I am guessing that most languages do not have fused relatives.  If I remember correctly, Japanese does not even have relative pronouns.  (See http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/japanese/relativeclause.html.)
 * —Wavelength (talk) 22:03, 9 August 2015 (UTC)


 * My understanding is that Japanese uses interrogative words as relative pronouns, like many languages, [edited to add: or I may be confusing myself thinking of "何も"-type constructions, which aren't really relative pronouns but more of an exhaustive conditional thing] but Japanese doesn't feature wh-movement (is there a better cross-linguistic term for this? "Wh-movement" is awfully anglocentric) so I would expect that a dummy noun like こと or something is always required and there is nothing like fused relatives (though my knowledge of Japanese grammar is limited). But I was under the impression that fused relatives are a common feature at least among Indo-European languages, and I would have expected them to be common (though not necessarily universal) more generally among all languages that have wh-movement. I know Spanish has them, but Spanish isn't relevant here because the relative/interrogative words don't inflect for case in Spanish. I don't know much about Latin but I thought it did have fused relatives, and my understanding is that Latin relative words do inflect for case, so I figured Latin would provide an example of a language where this question is meaningful. 24.7.88.102 (talk) 23:25, 9 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Some non-English terms for "wh-movement" are at https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2658424.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 23:41, 9 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Japanese does not have case, nor number. It uses particles and order of words to modify the meaning of the part of the sentence to convey the meaning. This is especially true in well written Japanese literature. In modern Japanese speech, however, these particles are very often dropped, and the word order is also random. A case in point, 'Akachan, tabeta?' (modern Tokyo speech) could mean two things. "Has the baby eaten?" or "Have you [or somebody else we are talking about] eaten the baby [and which baby?]?" Relatives are expressed with word order only, as in, 'Watashi no akachan wo tabeta moto-otto' (The ex-husband who ate my baby', parsed as 'My no baby wo ate ex-husband'. The Japanese version of "Whomever Maria likes is invited" would be parsed as "'Daredemo' (whoever') Maria -ga- likes - is invited."
 * — Preceding unsigned comment added by KageTora (talk • contribs) 15:12, 10 August 2015


 * Hmm, I think I see! Well, I can say that in French, "what you want" in this case is "ce que tu veux...", with "ce que" being a phrasal pronoun I suppose (literally "that which you want"). There is always a direct object ("ce") and either another direct object ("que") or an indirect object. There would be an indirect object if you say "ce dont tu as besoin..." ("what you need" or literally "that of which you have need"), or "ce à quoi tu t'attends..." ("what you expect"). There's no confusion because there is no single word that would translate "what", you have to use the two- or three-word phrase. The same solution would occur if you said something like "I am talking to the person whom you are talking about", which would use the verbal phrases "parler à" and "parler de", so "je parle à celui dont tu parles".
 * As for Latin, which does have pronoun inflection, the problem is actually resolved the same way, you just stick another object in there. For example, "I want what you need", "desidero id cuius eges", where "desiderare" takes the accusative ("id") and "egere" takes the genitive ("cuius"). Presumably this is the origin of the French construction. All the Romance languages have an equivalent construction, don't they? I think the other part of what you're asking has to do with apposition, maybe?. Maybe that's not the right word, I can't think of the proper one, but in Latin, whatever goes with "est" would be nominative, no matter what the case of the preceding noun phrase was. Adam Bishop (talk) 01:26, 10 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Right, so the two-word construction would be an ordinary or non-fused relative. Are fused relatives ever possible in French? Looking through the List of Latin Phrases I see "alterius non sit qui suus esse potest", "quae non prosunt singula multa iuvant", and "vincit qui patitur", which all look like fused relatives to me. If I'm not mistaken, there is no case conflict in these examples. I'm wondering whether this construction is always blocked (requiring the two-word phrasing) when there is a conflict or not. EDITED TO ADD: (I hope this is the right wiki etiquette) Looking further I find: "quem di diligunt adulescens moritur" where "quem" is unambiguously accusative despite the relative construction being the subject of "moritur". This is consistent with the German rule, though there could still be some other rule in Latin. The question then is what other case combinations are permitted. Another edit: Except adulescens can also be a noun? I don't know if a parse where adulescens is a noun is possible here. If so, it would mean this isn't necessarily a fused relative. This is the danger in trying to analyze the grammar of languages I don't know much about on my own. Third edit: It looks like the existence of the passive voice makes conflict very easy to avoid. I'm having trouble finding unambiguous examples of case conflict in that list. Possibly they are prohibited in Latin. 2601:645:8101:54AA:4C67:6FA5:82D3:86E9 (talk) 02:49, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * In your first three examples, those are all nominative subject pronouns, so no relative clauses to work with there. "Quem di diligunt" would seem to fit, the whole phrase is taken to be the subject of "moritur". "Adulescens" is a participle being used as a noun, "he whom the gods love dies as a youth". But let's change that sentence so it uses a verb that takes another case, "*quem di diligunt obviant" ("they are meeting the man whom the gods love"), that would not work, because obviare takes the dative. You would have to say "ei quem di diligunt obviant". But even if the the verb takes the accusative, "quem" can't be the object of both verbs, you would have to add another accusative object: "eum quem di diligunt laudant", "they are praising the man whom the gods love". Maybe "quem" could do double duty in this last example, in poetry or in pithy proverbs, but in normal prose it sounds wrong to me. Adam Bishop (talk) 03:59, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the help, I was a a little trepidatious trying to parse Latin grammar without any background in it. So would "quem di diligunt moritur" be grammatical? It's clear that "adulescens" is a subject-oriented predicative complement and not the subject (I.e. It can't be "a youth whom the gods love dies")? I'm afraid I don't quite understand why the first three examples aren't fused relatives. In "quae non prosunt singula multa iuvant", isn't "quae" working with both "prosunt" and "iuvant"? I would have guessed "quae non prosunt singula" is the subject of "iuvant". Am I mistaken? Is this nominative double-duty also striking at a poetic register? If fused relative constructions containing "quem" can serve as subject, are there any other cases that can do this as well? Editing again: If Latin follows a rule similar to that of German, then we would expect "*quem di diligunt obviant" to be ungrammatical but "cui obviant di diligent" ("the gods love whom(ever?) they meet"(?)) could be attested. Have you ever seen a Latin construction like that?2601:645:8101:54AA:4C67:6FA5:82D3:86E9 (talk) 04:59, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Right, "adulescens" is a complement, the sentence is still grammatical without it. For the other three, "quae non prosunt singula" is the subject of "iuvant", so you're right, "quae" is the nominative subject for both verbs. I was thinking before that "quae" and the others are just the subject pronouns, but they are actually the subject for both verbs separately. Maybe it normal prose it would be "ea quae". So if that is the definition of fused relatives, then I guess they would be fused! I can't think of any examples for the other cases, but they would be able to behave this way as well. Maybe something like cuius regio, eius religio, with genitives? Adam Bishop (talk) 20:02, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * In Russian your examples are (in translit) Ya skazhu l’ubomu/tomu (Dat.), kto (Nom.) vsprosit "I will tell everybody/that one who asks" and Ya poydu za l’ubym/tem (Instr.), kogo (Acc.) ya l’ubl’u "I will follow everybody/that one, whom I like". The latter also ...kem (Instr.) ya voskhishchayus’ "whom I adore" and kto (Nom.) mne (Dat.) nravits’a literally "who is liked by me".--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 23:56, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

To make the original fully grammatical, you need another relative such as onaj 'one, that', which however blocks the particle god ('-ever', just as in English *one whoever): "reći ću onomeDAT kogaACC vidim da nekog vređa...". Even the case-matching case dances around the edges of grammaticality, so it might not be the same in all Slavic languages. Lüboslóv? No such user (talk) 19:34, 10 August 2015 (UTC) As for my judgment about grammaticality, I would quote Steven from below: Most of the time, I suspect these cases are driven by intuition, rather than pure prescription. And intuition can be flexible: as I described above, there are times I might choose to be more "correct", and other times I wish to sound less "pedantic". - the forms with added resumptive pronouns are always more "pedantic", while the fused ones are more marked; on a scale of 1-10, I would generally judge fused relatives at 8 for nominative case; 6-7 for accusative; 5 for dative (hard to find an example); 1-3 for other cases or mixed-case. And there are always idioms and set phrases which resist the analysis: a quite fine translation for the below-mentioned Samuel 25:11 would be ...i datiGIVE gaIT ljudimaPEOPLE-DAT kojiWHO-REL dolazeCOME odFROM ko zna gdeWHO KNOWS WHERE, the latest being a set phrase in NOM, mismatching od which takes GEN argument. No such user (talk) 20:57, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks, it looks like in each of those examples there is a head word to the noun phrase in the matrix clause being modified by a relative clause with a separate pronoun so that they may each bear their respective case. Is there any Russian construction that permits both roles to be filled simultaneously by one word? Perhaps only in situations where both cases are the same? Maybe possible in the translation of a sentence like: "Who steals my purse steals trash"? 24.7.88.102 (talk) 01:24, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * M. Lozinsky thought it's Укравший мой кошель украл пустое or Ukravshyĭ (Past Participle; =who has stolen) moy koshel’ (=my purse) ukral pustoye (=[he] stole nothing). So I forgot about Russian participles. Possible alternatives from above: Ya skazhu sprosivshemu (Act. Past P. in Dat.) and Ya poydu za l’ubimym (Pass. Pres. P. in Instr.). Although the first sentence is somewhat contradictory: you speak about the present using a past participle.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 17:29, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Your sentence triggered an association with proverb "[he] who flies high falls low", which can be pretty much word-for-word translated into many European languages. See e.g. this WordReference thread. There is a question whether a separate pronoun (he/the one/that) acting as antecedent is required ( does it qualify as a resumptive pronoun?), but it seems to be facultative. That's the case at least in my native Serbo-Croatian: [Onaj] ko visoko leti [taj] nisko pada. Thinking about Serbo-Croatian fused relatives, they kind of work when the case is the same, at least in some examples: koga voliš nemoj mučiti ('whomACC you like don't torture', with like and torture both taking the ACC argument), although there is a proverbial, condensed, tone to it; more unmarked would be onog koga.... I found an usage where a fused relative triggered case mismatch, awkwardly resolved using a resumptive, and working mostly because of distance: *koga god da vidim da nekog vređa reći ću mu ('whomACC-ever I-see that insults someone I will tell him...'). No such user (talk) 14:14, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * If I'm following the gloss correctly, the reći ću clause is the matrix and the relative has been dislocated to front position? How does "recí ću koga god da vidim da nekog vređa ..." sound? Unacceptable? If so, would it still be unacceptable if the matrix and relative selected the opposite cases? 166.170.38.79 (talk) 16:02, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry for incomplete gloss. Yes, the word order is loose. What we have at hand is a relative pronoun "trying" to be the head of two clauses simultaneously; in SC, it is grammatical only if it requires the same case, i.e. verb rections are the same. In the above sentence, reći 'tell' requires dative but vidim 'see' accusative, so it's not grammatical. However, substitute the former with e.g. napasti 'attack', also requiring accusative, and it becomes grammatical: napasti ću koga god da vidim....
 * Does Serbo-Croation not feature dislocation, as in "my father, he is a surgeon", or "He's a real joker, that guy" or indeed "whoever is responsible for this, they will pay"? This type of construction is somewhat limited in English, but I understand it occurs all over the place in French, for example. I ask because I would have parsed your example as that, and figured the "mu" matches the matrix case. One type of construction that at least tentatively appears to be acceptable in German and maybe Latin is where the relative phrase is accusative and the construction functions as subject. Can you confirm that that would not ordinarily be encountered in Serbo-Croation? Does your judgment that fused relatives skirt the boundary of grammaticality apply in the case where nominative is selected by both clauses? 166.170.38.79 (talk) 20:15, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * It does not feature dislocation, not nearly as French. I would say that its relative constructs are more similar to English (it lost the elegant Russian participles and became more analytical in this regard). Yes, you parsed the first example correctly and "mu" does match the matrix case, but I qualified it as "awkward" (I dug that sentence from an internet forum, apparently ill-conceived by the author; similar mental path as for English "whomever..." could be raced).
 * If fused constructions are generally borderline, and introducing a head blocks "god", does that word have other, more major uses? The article on Serbo-Croatian grammar gives the example "Možeš reći što god hoćeš" and translates to "You can say whatever you want". I would apprectiate if you could give an English gloss this construction. How would you go about characterizing the "god" particle? Does it have a clear part of speech? What sorts of constructions does it enter into?2601:645:8101:54AA:8561:FF96:4CA5:DCAA (talk) 01:59, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * "MožešYOU_CAN rećiTELL(INF) štoWHAT god-EVER hoćešYOU_WANT". The only purpose of god is to act as an indeclinable postpositive particle to relative pronouns, closely matching English suffix '-ever' in usage and meaning (gde god 'wherever' etc.). And it stands slightly odd in the language, which does not feature many particle-based constructions elsewhere; it has a (however, Russian has a family of similar constructs, see wikt:кто-либо, wikt:кто-нибудь, wikt:кто-то). No such user (talk) 11:26, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Does što match the case for both verbs? Does the presence of god alter case constraints? 166.170.37.18 (talk) 16:17, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Mu. As in English, hteti 'want' is non-finite, so što (ACC, btw) is not its argument at all, only of reći. But nonetheless, examples with fused relative in nominative are abound. For example, ko god želi može (lit. 'who-ever wants can...', i.e. 'anyone who wants can...') – ko god is head of both verbs. But fused relative as a sentence subject is grammatical in English as well, e.g. Matthew 20:26. If I may ask, where are you aiming at? I think I demonstrated that SC is only borderline more open towards fused relatives, and I'm open towards further discussion, but my talk page is perhaps a better place for it. No such user (talk) 17:23, 11 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I don't think the construction exists in Latin: like the Russian examples, Latin would use a resumptive pronoun. --ColinFine (talk) 07:09, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Break inserted between general discussion and English-specific discussion

 * I'm not sure that OP is right that there is no native intuition (or at least school instruction) in such matters. In OP's original case, I was taught very clearly that the correct answer would be "I will tell whoever asks." We did a lot of sentence diagramming in my high school freshman English class. For the purpose of selecting the correct pronoun there, the choice would be governed by the pronoun's position in the clause where it actually lives, which would be apparent from the diagram. The fact that the subordinate clause has the role of object in the main clause would be irrelevant to that. StevenJ81 (talk) 14:57, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Similarly, in Wavelength's 2601:645:8101:54AA:99C1:99FB:B2C8:162C's example above ("Whomever Maria likes is invited"), the immediate grammatical function of whomever is as direct object of the subordinate clause ("Maria likes whomever"), so the relative is in objective or accusative case—even though the subordinate clause as a whole serves as subject of the independent clause. StevenJ81 (talk) 15:27, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * These days, of course, most people in speech would start with whoever, and probably most people even in writing would do the same. Whom/whomever survives best these days (a) in more formal language and (b) where the word order seems to fit it more naturally. English rarely sees objects preceding subjects in everyday language or in prose writing, so it can be pretty difficult to convince people that whomever would be correct in this setting. And in speech, whomever would probably sound just. plain. pedantic. So even someone like me would use whoever in speech here if I need not to sound pedantic. To some extent, that sort of reasoning is why the language continues to evolve. I wouldn't be surprised if the prescription in Standard English will have changed by 20 years from now. StevenJ81 (talk) 15:35, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * School instruction isn't native intuition. I'm interested in a descriptive account in languages where case-marking in these situations is governed by syntactic constraints even in colloquial speech, so English isn't really relevant. The account that you were taught in school is problematic because it fails to explain how the verb number is syntactically controlled by the relative phrase (not just selected according to semantic factors), it fails to explain why preposition fronting is ungrammatical in fused relatives, and it fails to explain why fused relatives can appear as non-extraposed subjects in post-auxiliary position. 166.170.38.79 (talk) 16:18, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Look, I thought I responded to what you wrote above. If it left you with additional questions, it does not mean that what I was taught in school was problematic. It means that I had no idea whatsoever that the points you now raise were relevant to the answer. Either I am not enough of a professional linguist to understand you—and I'm not one—or you were not terribly clear in your communication—and you weren't. Enough said on that. I could probably answer at least the first point you raised, but since you have just said you are not interested in English, I'll break off here. StevenJ81 (talk) 17:32, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry, my tone may have seemed hostile which is not what I intended. What I meant was that I'm aware that the rule of agreement being controlled by the matrix clause is one of the common prescriptive positions. However my issue with that is that it is based on a theory of the proper analysis that says the function of the relative construction in the matrix clause is irrelevant, and importantly, this analysis is not reached based on the usage data but based on the assumption that there can be only one verb controlling the case. In all the languages other than English where this type of construction exists that have been discussed here, both verbs impose constraints on the case and the construction may be blocked entirely (requiring an overt head noun "anyone who(m)" instead of who(m)ever) in at least some cases of conflict. It's possible English is unique in that the matrix verb imposes no constraints at all, but I'm not aware that this position is well-supported by the data. My understanding is that there is great variation in prose even if we limit ourselves to the most respected authors. That is, actual usage is something of a mess here. I also may have overstated my lack of interest in English. To the extent the data of English usage is consistent, it is worth mentioning, I just don't expect that it will be consistent enough for a clear rule to emerge. I would be interested to know if there is statistical evidence that case-conflict is or is not typically avoided by rephrasing or alternation to non-fused relatives, but I understand such evidence would be a lot of work to produce. 166.170.38.79 (talk) 18:58, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I accept your apology.
 * I'd probably agree with you that (a) English usage, especially colloquial/informal usage, is probably not consistent enough to analyze, and (b) it would be hard to produce the evidence, especially given (c) the "moribund" state of whom/whomever. I suspect, but would have a hard time proving, the following for English:
 * In formal English grammar, they way we learn it from a book, the matrix clause verb really has no impact on the case in the relative clause. I would have no way to know how unique that really is.
 * In less formal or colloquial use, there are "light" conflicts and "heavy" conflicts. A light conflict is a situation where the difference between the case demanded by the matrix verb and the case demanded by the relative verb differ only by a fairly simple and similar word substitution ("whoever"/"whomever"). Most of the time, I suspect these cases are driven by intuition, rather than pure prescription. And intuition can be flexible: as I described above, there are times I might choose to be more "correct", and other times I wish to sound less "pedantic". Those are instincts, too. The de minimus example of this is where there is no case difference at all, which is most of the time in English. (It's not unlike the subjunctive mood, which we were discussing here recently. Frequently, the subjunctive and indicative forms of verbs are the same in English, so there is no difference to parse.)
 * I think if the conflict is "heavy", then people restructure the sentence.
 * But these are just guesses. StevenJ81 (talk) 19:31, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Slight caveat: I haven't quite worked through whether there are examples of where a potential case conflict of a fused relative could actually block a construction outright in English. I'm a native speaker, and maybe my brain instinctively assumes things like that don't exist. I am pretty confident that where a fused relative construction can exist, its case is governed entirely by the relative clause verb, not the matrix clause verb. StevenJ81 (talk) 21:52, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * A "true" case of blocking of a fused relative for case reasons in English would be difficult to find. In Standard Modern English, "who(m)ever" is the only word that both can have a fused relative function and inflects for case. And "whoever" is almost always acceptable in informal style, so blocking in the formal register would typically take the form of an informal-style "whoever" (or rephrasing) being mandatory. The only "evidence" of a blocked whomever would be one that sounds especially stilted, but usage of "who" is random enough that I would say it's more a matter of some usages being more common than others. In a brief comb over some examples it does seem to me like case-conflicting examples are a bit more rare than case-matching examples in pie es that make full use of "whom", though that could be explained for reasons other than "partial" blocking. In general, pied-piping is the only situation that rules out "who" in all registers (which is really just the result of a style conflict - pied-piping doesn't usually occur in informal style), but preposition-fronting isn't an option in fused relatives regardless of case issues, so it would be hard to construct a real blocking situation. 166.170.38.79 (talk) 23:30, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, I was thinking about this some. Is it considered a fused relative when something other than a relative pronoun is used? Is what makes it a fused relative the fact that the relative clause is serving a noun function in the matrix clause without a preposition or determinant or the like? If so, consider the following:
 * "Who(m)ever Maria loves is invited." Our base case, well discussed.
 * "They/Them Maria loves are invited." I think this construction is blocked either way. In my terminology before, that's a "heavy" conflict. "They" would be considered flat-out wrong; I'm not sure if "them" would also be considered flat-out wrong, or just awkward. But a good writer, or even a good speaker, would never say that.
 * "Who(m) Maria loves is invited." Falls between the first two; at best, awkward and probably would be changed.
 * "Those Maria loves are invited." There's no case conflict here, but I include it to show that the relative clause can drive the number of the verb in the matrix clause.
 * If these aren't considered fused relatives, then I apologize for not quite understanding the concept as fully as I might. Thank you for educating me. StevenJ81 (talk) 13:49, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Most of those would be noun phrases taking non-fused relative modifiers. Personal pronouns can only take modifiers in restricted circumstances (compare: "poor you!" and *"give it to tall him over there") and a personal pronoun with a relative clause is limited to poetic and "proverbial" registers: "He who laughs last laughs hardest". Usually there are three options for a relative: "bare" relative: "the man I saw", taking "that" as complementizer: "the man that I saw", and using a relative pronoun: "the man whom I saw". I don't think a personal pronoun could ordinarily take a bare relative: *"I invited them Maria loves". In the case of "Those Maria loves are invited", the demonstrative "those" is a head noun taking the bare relative "Maria loves ___" (here I'm making the relative gap explicit) as a modifier. Compare "those that Maria love" and "those whom Maria loves". I don't think I've ever encountered an analysis of these constructions where "those" would be taken to be part of the relative clause, at least not as a matter of surface structure. "John brought that big dog" and "John brought that big dog he owns" and "John brought that big dog of his" usually would be analyzed as the presence or absence of a modifier on the head noun "dog".166.170.37.18 (talk) 16:00, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I appreciate that exposition. I'm interested and know a decent amount about this. But I'm a layman. So, for example, I think that it is plausible to consider "those" to be the object of the relative clause. But that doesn't mean that experts generally do analyze it that way, and evidently they don't. (For what it's worth: My high-school English teacher was a real stickler for good sentence structure and word usage. But at that point in my education, he was clearly not concerned whether I chose the academically preferable sentence analysis. He was concerned that I could take a reasonable shot at analysis and defend my choice.) Thanks again for teaching me about this. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:17, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * (de-indent) I suppose it may be possible to analyze bare relatives (and their heads) as having a structure similar to fused relatives. I don't think it would increase the explanatory power of the theory, though, and you would then have to explain why bare relatives and fused relatives exhibit a difference in grammaticality for subject of the relative despite having (allegedly) the same structure: "Mary likes whoever is invited" but *"Mary likes those are invited" (we need "that" or a relative pronoun here).166.170.37.18 (talk) 17:36, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * StevenJ81, that example was provided by someone editing from 2601:645:8101:54AA:99C1:99FB:B2C8:162C, and not by me.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 16:06, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * My eyes aren't what they used to be. Thanks for catching that. StevenJ81 (talk) 16:11, 10 August 2015 (UTC)


 * In these times of digital multitasking and of many people with short attention spans, it seems to me that resumptive pronouns are often used by such people and for such people, when simpler options are available. However, similar structures are found in some translations of the last part of 1 Samuel 25:11, which seems to be somewhat more complicated.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 18:38, 10 August 2015 (UTC)


 * That may (probably?) come(s) from the fact that the Hebrew itself uses a resumptive pronoun. Syntactically, I would translate the Hebrew of the end of the verse as "... and give it to men that I do not know from where they come." StevenJ81 (talk) 18:57, 10 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I never saw "whomever" before today.  What literature does it exist in?   "Anyone whom" is definitely wrong. 78.149.122.51 (talk) 19:08, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * "Anyone whom" can be correct: "I try to protect anyone whom I love." This, though, is exactly the type of prescription-vs.-intuition case that 166... and I were just discussing above. The grammar book currently prescribes whom here, although to be fair grammar books these days are probably calling this one as ok either way. But I suspect that most people's instincts here say who, and that is part of the reason things are moving in the direction they are moving. StevenJ81 (talk) 19:36, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I had a look in the Prayer Book to see if I could find any of these alleged words.  There was nothing apart from a "whensoever" in the first (1549) edition.   Spelling has changed, but not the use of relative pronouns.   "Jerusalem" is "Hierusalem", obviously taken from the Latin.   "Hebrew" is "Hebrue", "Caesar" is "Cesar", "Caiaphas is "Caiphas".   I would guess that these are Latin based, in the same way that Catholics refer to "Isaias" rather than "Isaiah".   Pontius Pilate is Poncius Pilate.   "Iscariot" is "Iscarioth", which would be nearer to the Aramaic.
 * Archaisms, still present in American English, are seen, for example "Solemnization" of Matrimony and 'I "baptize" thee'.
 * The present version of the Prayer Book dates from 1662.  There have been changes - the reform of the calendar impacted it a lot, while the prayers for the Royal Family necessarily change.   The services for 30 January, 29 May and 5 November were removed in 1859.   The coronation service is not in it - Elizabeth will become the longest - reigning monarch ever in a few weeks and she is going to mark the occasion by opening a new railway in Scotland.   I don't think we've had any of those since 1953 although they're building fast.
 * As the Church is established, all versions of the Prayer Book and the statute should agree.  They do, by and large, but it wasn't always so.   Either Oxford or Cambridge had "Thy will be done in earth, As it is in heaven" and the other had "Thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven".   That these inconsistencies have been ironed out is entirely due to the efforts of one man, who catalogued all of them. 92.19.28.56 (talk) 14:04, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * As important as the Book of Common Prayer is to our linguistic history, the absence of such words there is no proof that they do not, could not, or should not exist. Can you provide contrary examples of relative pronouns serving these particular functions? (If so, that is at most proof that even Standard English has been flexible. But I'm curious.) StevenJ81 (talk) 14:50, 11 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I don't know if you would be likely to see "whomever" in an archaic register. I'm no expert in English history but I believe modern "whoever" comes from "whoso ever" which comes from "whoso" which in turn comes from the Old English construction "swa hwa swa", which I believe had its origins in a correlative construction - compare on "Ac God wat soðlice ðæt eowre eagan beoð geopenode on swa hwylcum dæge swa ge etað of ðam treowe" from an Old English translation of Genesis which can be roughly glossed as something like "but God knows truly that your eyes (will) be opened on such what day such you eat from that tree".166.170.37.18 (talk) 18:03, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Merriam-Webster gives first use of "whoever" as 13th century, "whoso" as 12th century. It also affirms the existence of "whomever" and "whomso" as objective case versions of the other two, but does not show a first use date for those. StevenJ81 (talk) 18:10, 11 August 2015 (UTC)


 * @ 78.149.122.51's I never saw "whomever" before today: 'Whomever' is used about 900 times on Wikipedia, although I have my doubts about some of them. Some of those 900-odd users should bone up @ Doubts can also arise … in Who (pronoun).  Indeed, I myself was once reduced to asking a question at the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk about this very uncertainty.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  19:40, 11 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Found one:


 * 92.25.66.109 (talk) 10:10, 13 August 2015 (UTC)


 * And that is a classic case of where the use of "whomever" is contra-indicated. Please see Doubts can also arise … @ Who (pronoun) for why it's wrong.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  20:37, 13 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Good one, Jack. Partly because of the phenomenon of pied-piping, there is a strong bias for a pronoun directly after a preposition to be placed in the objective case. In true cases of pied-piping (which this isn't), you will never see the word "who" right after the preposition; as 166... said above, true cases of pied-piping are about the last place left where "whom" never gets replaced by "who". (People either recast the sentence to avoid the pied-piping, or they use "whom".) But this isn't actually a case of pied-piping.
 * User 92..., here is the quick explanation. The entire subordinate clause is the object of the preposition "with". But "whoever"—not "whomever"—is the subject of the dependent clause. So it must be in subjective case. StevenJ81 (talk) 21:07, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Silly me.  Yes, I should have spotted the difference between "Consult with her" (object pronoun) and "Consult with she who must be obeyed" (subject of the relative clause). 92.24.104.64 (talk) 09:28, 14 August 2015 (UTC)