Whom does the pronoun "he" refer to in the sentence "Whom did John implicate and did he get in trouble?"

April 14, 2006 3:10 PM

Whom does the pronoun "he" refer to in the sentence "Whom did John implicate and did he get in trouble?" Why?
posted by yeoz to writing & language (15 comments total)

That sentence is ambiguous and needs to be rewritten.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 3:19 PM on April 14, 2006

See Also.
posted by phrontist at 3:19 PM on April 14, 2006

(wouldn't it be "who did..."?)
as far as i can see, it could be either john or the person he implicated. why? because i can associate the sentence with either of those senses without seeing any inconsistency.

also, is "whom" (which is i guess used correctly at the start of your question) still used in america? in the uk you'd use "who" there too.
posted by andrew cooke at 3:19 PM on April 14, 2006

The answer is: "we have no idea, nor do we have any way of finding out". The sentence conatins a murky antecedent .

P.S. I'm not a proscriptive grammar type, but the question you posted sounds odd to me. If you are going to say "whom does X refer to" (instead of the more colloquial, but less correct, "who does X refer to"), I would go with "to whom does X refer". I know, it's a derail, but it's a related derail.
posted by The Bellman at 3:20 PM on April 14, 2006

Agreed that it's ambiguous. I would probably read it as "the guy John implicated", but someone else could reach the other conclusion, so it should be rewritten.

And FWIW, "whom" is "correctly" used as an object, but I too am surprised anyone bothers to use it when "who" has picked up object functionality as well.
posted by SuperNova at 3:26 PM on April 14, 2006

Oh, and my personal opinion for The Bellman -- differentiating between subject and object (like who/whom used to, and he/him still does) is a logical thing to do. Elaborately constructing phrases so as not to end with prepositions seems rather silly.
posted by SuperNova at 3:28 PM on April 14, 2006

oh, my mistake then. i thought it was only used for indirect objects!
posted by andrew cooke at 3:33 PM on April 14, 2006

SuperNova: I agree, which is why I would have used "who" (which is technically wrong) instead of "whom" (which is technically right). Generally, rearranging sentences to avoid ending with prepositions is the sort of proscriptive nonsense up with which I will not put, but in this case the sentence just sounded odd as phrased.
posted by The Bellman at 3:38 PM on April 14, 2006

Whom did John implicate and did he get in trouble?

The question depends on the contextual relationship between implicate and trouble. In normal cause-effect circumstances, you implicate someone who is guilty of something, therefor he would refer to the person John implicated.

The other possibility is (as everyone already pointed out) that the act of implicating someone could get John in trouble, but I think sometimes you just have to play the odds. In English, speakers tend to only give specific additional information when the ambiguity is such that the average person wouldn't know who you were talking about.

Thus if the person who might be in trouble is John, you'd say, "and did he get in trouble for doing so," or "and did John get in trouble."
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 4:21 PM on April 14, 2006

I would choose to interpret "he" as referring to John, because, in the interest of gender-equality, it doesn't make much sense to automatically assume that the person implicated was male (of course, depending on context, the assumption might be justified.)
posted by folara at 4:38 PM on April 14, 2006

Apparently the best answer has been given, but in case people are still reading this thread, could I sort of piggyback on this question? In cases like these, I find myself following a "rule of thumb" that I remember being taught way, way back in elementary school to always assume that the pronoun refers to the antecedent that comes immediately before it, i.e. John in this particular case. So, yes, it's ambiguous and could be interpreted both ways, but if I absolutely had to figure this sentence out without any other information, I would assume that "he" means John. Is this correct? Or am I remembering wrong?
posted by misozaki at 5:09 PM on April 14, 2006

misozaki: I don't think that's really a rule, but it is a good rule of thumb. The fact is people tend to associate pronouns with the closest antecedent. So, when the closest antecedent isn't the intended one, confusion arises.

In this case, the sentence is just vague, as The Bellman correctly noted. The "he" could refer to John or to someone else.

As to the who/whom issue (one that I, too, wish would just fade away). It's harder to pick the correct form when the sentence is made into a question by reversing the normal word order. If you make it "John did implicate whom and he did get in[to] trouble," it's easier to see that "whom" is functioning as an object (and, when it comes to questions of pronoun case, an object is an object is an object).
posted by wheat at 10:28 PM on April 14, 2006

Thanks, wheat!
posted by misozaki at 11:54 PM on April 14, 2006

"Whom" was correct, but Calvin Trilllin says that people who use "whom" sound like English butlers. This is America, Jack.
posted by megatherium at 7:13 AM on April 15, 2006

"Whom" was correct

...a century or two ago. Now it's just pretentious.

As for the sentence, like everyone else said, it's hopelessly ambiguous and needs to be rewritten.
posted by languagehat at 4:04 PM on April 15, 2006