Saturday, June 25, 2022

grammar quiz

Give this magic hammer to _____ is the most worthy.

a. whomever (object of the preposition to)
b. whoever (subject of the clause whoever is the most worthy)

Answer (highlight to see):

[The answer is (b). The object of the preposition to is the entire noun clause. A clause has to have a subject, so whoever works here because it's in the nominative—i.e., subjective—case. Whomever, meanwhile, is in the dative (indirect-object) case.]



2 comments:

John Mac said...

Whatever.

I'm not sure if I've screwed this up recently or not. I tend to avoid using whomever and whoever whenever possible because I was never sure which was correct. I have my answer now, but will I remember?

Kevin Kim said...

I guess you can avoid the issue just by writing "the one who."