Language
Syntax
People such as he
Nov 16th 2012, 21:26 by R.L.G. | NEW YORK
ON ECONOMIST.COM we recently wrote the following:
Mr Blankfein called for “shared sacrifice” and even argued that rich people such as he should pay higher taxes...
It struck me as odd. "Rich people such as he"?
But I wasn't sure why I thought it looked wrong. "Like" would be straightforward, and takes the accusative case (People like him should pay higher taxes.) But some guidebooks include a ruling, specious in my view, "like" cannot introduce examples (Rock stars, like Bono and Mick Jagger, do not have to make reservations), and that such likes should be changed to such as. I thought maybe my colleague had wandered into error by trying to apply this (non-)rule. But rich people such as him should pay higher taxes looked weird to me too.
I couldn't find a ready answer in the "Merriam-Webster's Guide to English Usage", Bryan Garner's "Dictionary of Modern American Usage", or the OED to my question: what case of pronoun should follow such as? Does it matter that he should pay higher taxes could stand as a clause on its own? Striking out with my reference books, I wrote Geoff Pullum, a syntactician from the University of Edinburgh currently visiting at Brown University and probably most widely known for his no-nonsense blogging at Language Log. He replied generously at such length that this should really be considered a guest post by him. The * indicates an ungrammatical sentence, and the ?? indicates an unidiomatic or questionable one.
[Begin message from Geoffrey Pullum]
The standard wisdom about case of pronouns that are predicative complements (and that includes many complements of "than" and "as") is that if you could fill in a clause instead of a pronoun, and in that clause the pronoun would be nominative, then the nominative pronoun is correct. So:
He argued that rich people such as he is should pay higher taxes.
*He argued that rich people such as him is should pay higher taxes.
Therefore:
He argued that rich people such as he should pay higher taxes.
But purists then overreach by saying that the alternative is bad:
He argued that rich people such as him should pay higher taxes.
But for these prepositions like "than" and "as" that can take both pronouns ("smarter than me") and comparative clauses as their complements ("smarter than I am") the position today is that normal style uses accusative. In some cases the nominative is not permissible at all:
It annoyed the others more than me.
*It annoyed the others more than I.
But even in the cases where it is possible, using the nominative is incredibly formal and pompous. It just doesn't sound like an ordinary human being:
??He is smarter than I.
??He is as smart as I.
??If only it had been I.
These are not just a little bit formal; they are so stuffy and fake-sounding that I think anyone learning English should be told quite decisively to avoid them like the plague.
At the very least, I'd say don't use these structures if you want to sound as normal as me.
This stuff is treated in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language around pp. 459ff.
[Ed. that would be Prof Pullum and Rodney Huddleston's own "Cambridge Grammar". Johnson's thanks to Prof Pullum for his guest post.]
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R.L.G. wrote I wrote Geoff Pullum...
I just did that, too. I took a piece of vellum, a bottle of ink and a quill and wrote those the name "Geoff Pullum".
I'm sure, R.L.G., that you wrote to Mr. Pullum, you did not simply write his name on a piece of paper.
;-)
E.
This is a very a important discussion but could we also work on a definition of when 'next weekend' is? Also, those little solid state memory doodads we stick in a USB slot in our computer, they don't have a name yet.
It smells to me like a construction a speaker of Dutch would intuitively use.
I can accept that language is fluid , and I am willing to accept change , provided the structure of the language remains intact and there is some logic to the construction of our expression. Provided as well that the meaning that we are trying to convey is clear. All else would be superfluous - though it could still add value - grace and beauty for example. The main function of language is to convey thought. However we risk , if we are careless - which , unfortunately these days , too many of us are, loosing the ability to convey our thoughts clearly, which is why these sorts of matters should be taken seriously.
What is even more disturbing these days , is that there are significant numbers of immigrants in traditionally English speaking countries who do not have English as a first language and who must have , I assume , an effect on the language of their adopted country. We really do not want to wind up with a mongrel language that is unable to convey our thoughts clearly because it has become so weakened. There is the real risk of damaging the English language so badly that it becomes ersatz.
Most Indo-European languages use nominative case for likeness or comparison. So "such as I" or "more than I". Like me, that's me or more than me are usages that have probably been imported from French. Anyway, as English only has a pronoun case structure, and no substantive/adjective case structure - unlike you do in Latin, German, and Russian (or for that case the old Anglo-Saxon) - most native speakers simply don't have the ear for this, sadly.
By the way, the reason "It annoyed the others more than I" is incorrect, is because "the others" is already in the accusative case, and since "I" is in the same case as "the others" it also has to be in the accusative case. IE the nominative for "as", "like" or "than" is subsidiary to the primary case - in that case, the accusative following "It annoyed".
RLG:
Good post.This is a problem we -us) language nerds come on all the time. If Geoff Pullum says "I" is stuffy, than it's okay with me.
RLG:
Good post.This is a problem we -us) language nerds come on all the time. If Geoff Pullum says "I" is stuffy, than it's okay with me.
Bottom line:
If you're rich, whether you know grammar or not, you should pay higher taxes...
:-D
Old pirates, yes, they rob I;
Sold I to the merchant ships,
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pit...
Sometimes the meaning is different:
She likes him more than me = She likes him more than she likes me.
She likes him more than I = She likes him more than I like him.
That's a wrong comparison, because "She likes" is followed by accusative case anyway. In that case, if I am the object, it is accusative, if I am the subject it is nominative.
The answer is there is no correct answer. There are no strict rules in English, it being a continually evolving conglomeration of several other languages. There is convention, and that is all there is.
"Mr Blankfein called for “shared sacrifice” and even argued that rich people such as himself should pay higher taxes..."
I don't see a problem with this.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Oh no he didn't! Jelly just drop a himself on that noise! Whattup!!!
Where and why did you write Geoff Pullum? Perhaps on a small piece of paper stuck to your computer screen. Then again, maybe you also wrote "to" Geoff Pullum.
That omission of the pronoun is common (and clear), although old-fashioned. Once it was common to say one man 'spoke' the other with no intervening pronoun, and it is still common to say you 'told' him or 'showed' him without use of pronoun. On the other hand, 'said' always is used with a pronoun, a feature that grows in large part from its common usage when writing conversations, to avoid confusion. For similar purposes, "wrote" is almost always used with a preposition when not offering a quotation.
Do you mean preposition? I assume you are talking about 'to'.
If so, you're absolutely right. There is nothing strange or odd about writing somebody.
Yes, thank you. I slipped and wrote pronoun in lieu of preposition three times it seems.
An example,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/bill-gates/9041726/Bill-Gates-I-wr...
In my opinion, British English does not allow one to say "I wrote Cameron", if one meant that one sent a letter to Mr Cameron.
But in American English, I think that it's standard to say "I wrote Obama" to mean that one sent a letter to Mr Obama.
I don't know what one says in Globish, nor do I want to know.
And what if I wrote Cameron and Obama? ;-)
Anyway, "I wrote Cameron" might also mean "I wrote the name Cameron", so adding just 12 letters and writing or saying "I wrote David Cameron a letter" would not be ambiguous and looks and sounds better.
The best form in your example (and several of these others) is the reflexive "himself". He argued that rich people such as himself should pay higher taxes. It's a little formal-sounding, but not nearly as bad as trying to stick the nominative in there. He would do even better to argue that rich people LIKE himself should pay higher taxes.
You beat me to it
My Fowler (2nd Ed.) makes it pretty clear that "such as he" is correct in your first example. See the entry for "as 9. Case after as."
A growing number of people (not only Americans and non-native English speakers) write "like I said" instead of "as I said", and other "likes" instead of "as...ses", and even vice versa. I wouldn't cast the first stone. These things are infectious, and I wonder if one day, if the majority write "like", those who write "as" will be considered as those who are wrong.
As for The Cambridge Grammar, etc I have modern grammars and handbooks, of course, but sometimes I prefer older books. I love my old John M. Kierzek's 'The Macmillan Handbook of English', The Macmillan Company, New York, 1939 (Eight Printing, January, 1946). Even physically (solid, well-bound, virtually indestructible hardcover, good paper). A tad outmoded sometimes, but I would't change it for any modern equivalent handbook.
Let's just blow off "such as".
If I could blow off "such as" I'd be invited to every party in town.
As it stands I can only belch "The Archbishop of Canterbury".
"...incredibly formal and pompous. It just doesn't sound like an ordinary human being...." Pullum is on target, as usual.
Yes, it's the way some professors I know talk. If you tell them it sounds stilted, they'll reply frostily, "Not to me."
The origin of words (etymology) is fascinating. The origin of points of grammar even more so. I wonder what the academics call it?
Historical syntax.
"It annoyed the others more than I." would be perfectly acceptable if the speaker were, say, Gilbert Gottfried or Fran Drescher and they were comparing the effect of a fire alarm and their voices on a group of people.