Whom or Who? Please explain with grammatical details.?

Question

In the following sentence, 'whom' is being used:

A dinner was given in honor of the man whom everyone knew would be the prospective president of the company.

Please state whether using 'whom' is correct or not, and provide grammatical reasonings to support your answer.

I should state that I know about the objective/subjective view. However, what I need to know is 'how' to analyze this sentence to know whether to use whom or who? I would like to see an answer that explains the choice with grammatical reasonings instead of a website.

My confusion is due to the following:

Should the latter part of the sentence be read as:

Everyone knew the man. The man would be the prospective president of the company.

And therefore use 'whom' since the above can be translated as the following two parts: 'Everyone knew him.' 'He would be the prospective president of the company'.

Or

If it should be read as 'Everyone knew the man would be the prospective president of the company.' And in this case 'the man' can only be substituted with 'he', and therefore using 'who' would be correct.

I just need to know which analysis is correct.

Answer 1

Who is correct; whom is incorrect.

If the sentence had read, "A dinner was given in honor of the man whom everyone knew," the word "whom" would be the object of the verb "knew" and would be correct in that context. In that case, the clause "whom everyone knew" would be a dependent clause that described the man in whose honor the dinner was given and distinguished him from the universe of men whom nobody knew and also from the universe of men whom some people knew and whom others didn't know.

However, given the way the sentence does read, it should be corrected to say, "A dinner was given in honor of the man who everyone knew would be the prospective president of the company," because in context it is not the object of the verb, "knew," but is instead, when combined with the word "man," the subject of the verb, " would be." In this example, the words, "who everyone knew would be the prospective president of the company" is a dependent clause that describes the man in whose honor the dinner was given not in terms of who knew him and who didn't, but in terms of what's important about him in the context of this dinner.

But the dependent clause need not constitute a complete sentence in order to have a subject and a verb. To illustrate with a more commonly encountered form of dependent clause, consider a sentence that read, "A dinner was given in honor of the man who shot Liberty Valance." If the sentence were modified to read, "A dinner was given in honor of the man who everyone knew shot Liberty Valance," the "who" should not be changed to "whom" for the same reason that it should not be changed in the sentence under discussion.

The words "everyone knew" are parenthetical and unnecessary to the sentence. The sentence should be analyzed in this context as if it read, "A dinner was given in honor of the man who would be the prospective president of the company." The words "everyone knew" can be deleted from the sentence without changing its meaning. Try putting the words "everyone knew" in parentheses instead of deleting them, and you will see that while they add some extraneous information to the sentence, they don't add anything substantive that cannot be added or subtracted without changing the essential meaning of the sentence.

In the sentence regarding the dinner in honor of the man who shot Liberty Valance, we could put "everyone knew" in parentheses, as in "a dinner was given in honor of the man who (everyone knew) shot Liberty Valance," or reposition them, as in "a dinner was given in honor of the man who shot Liberty Valance, as everyone knew," and it would be clear that those words expressed only a parenthetical thought that was not critical to the meaning of the sentence and therefore we should not change the word "who," which is the word we would use in the absence of the unnecessary words, to "whom" in situations where the unnecessary words are in fact used but are still unnecessary.

Answer 2

Whom refers to the object of the sentence and who refers to the subject.

Answer 3

I read in this english book that in modern day english, who nd whom mean one nd the same.... though i do agree tht who sounds better subject and whom object.

Answer 4

It is subjective case, so it should be "who".

It is not objective, because the object of the verb "knew" is not "whom" but "who would be the (president)". "Who" is the subject of "would be the (president)".

If it helps, you would say "Everyone knew he would be president" not "Everyone knew him would be president". Always use WHO when you would use "he", and if perfect grammar is required, use WHOM when you would use "him". (If perfect grammar is not required go ahead and use who all the time.)

Answer 5

It's whom, because it is the objective form.

Who is the subjective.

Answer 6

'Whom' is correct.
Everyone knew him.
The man whom I met on the plane, talked a lot.
The person who was chosen as president is married.

Answer 7

Use "who" when it is the subject of a verb.
(Explained below)

Use "whom" when it is not the subject of a verb.

ALWAYS WHOM AFTER PREPOSITIONS

it's all nicely explained here
http://www.grammar-monster.com/lessons/who_whom_lessons.htm

Answer 8

What's up, just wanted to mention, I enjoyed this discussion. valuable answers

Answer 9

Should be who, whom follows a preposition

Answer 10

Yes,whom is correct.If you translate whom to hindi,it would be "kisko" and who would be "kaun",though it depends on the sentence but whom always has a "ko" attached like "jisko"etc.