Re: THEORY: English Pronouns (was Re: THEORY: Ergativity and polypersonalism)

TM = Tristan McLey
RH = Rob Haden
PN = Philip Newton

TM> I'd describe it as stylistic clash: similar to 'the person to who it
TM> happened' or 'the person whom it happened to'.

RH> The relative pronoun in the first example should also be 'whom', from what
RH> I understand.

PN> And the pronoun in the second example "should" be 'who', otherwise you
PN> have the aforementioned stylistic clash.

Yup, I'm sure that's what Tristan meant.  But I personally would never
say "the person who it happened to."; I'd leave the relative pronoun out
entirely ("The person it happened to").  So for me, a better example
might be "That's who it happened to", which not only requires the "who"
(*"That's it happened to" is not grammatical in any dialect I know of),
but also requires a rather more circuitious circumlocution to recast in
formal guise: "That is the person to whom it happened." or some such.
Even so, I'd be pretty likely to spout out "That's whom it happened to",
stylistic clash or no.

-Marcos