Sentence Correction

logitech wrote:Okay it seems that both the editor of this article and I failed to use WHO instead of WHOM here...

Grammar Girl makes it look easy

It was almost exactly a year ago when I did the first show about who versus whom. In that show I only covered the simple cases, and lately I've been getting questions that made me think I should delve deeper into the topic. So today's topic is who versus whom--advanced.

Here's an example of the kind of questions that are coming in. Derrick from Oakland, CA, recently read a story in the Wall Street Journal about restaurants that offer tasting menus that pair wine with food, and he came across this sentence about the sommelier:
We never did meet his teammate ... who[m] he said works the room in his absence.

Derrick thought the whom seemed out of place and asked me to explain why. He's right, and I will have a quick and dirty tip for you, but first, I want to explain in grammatical terms why it should be who.

First, you have to separate out the clause that contains the who or whom. All you need to care about is how the who or whom functions within that clause.

In the example sentence--We never did meet his teammate who he said works the room in his absence--the last part (who he said works the room in his absence) is something called an adjectival clause. That just means the whole thing functions as an adjective to tell use more about the teammate. Who is the teammate? Someone who he says works the room in his absence.

The part that always seems to mess people up in clauses like that is the he says part. Someone who [he says] works the room in his absence.

It seems as if people see the he and think it might be the subject of the clause, but it's not. The good news is that he says is a separate clause within the adjectival clause, and you can just ignore it. It's parenthetical--an aside (1, 2). Take it out in your imagination as you look at the sentence or cross it out. Taking it out leaves you with the clause who works the room in his absence.

So our original question is actually:

In June, 1981, six teenagers in the village of Medjugorje, Yugoslavia, claimed to have had visions of the Virgin Mary, who ,they say, has continued to appear to them over the ensuing years.

In June, 1981, six teenagers in the village of Medjugorje, Yugoslavia, claimed to have had visions of the Virgin Mary, who has continued to appear to them over the ensuing years.