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Could anyone explain why this sentence is considered ungrammatical?

You often hear quite literate people saying hideously ungrammatical things such as: "He is the kind of person who, if he had lived in the 19th century, people would not have been able to categorise him."

Source: Melvyn's rules for the conversation game (article from the Independent)

J.R.
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FroztC0
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  • Great question! It would be better if you didn’t presuppose that it actually was ungrammatical in your question, though. Leave that judgment to the answers. –  Jan 28 '19 at 04:58

3 Answers3

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First, as others have pointed out in the comments, the sentence uses "who" when it should use "whom." Even native speakers fail to correctly distinguish between "who" and "whom". It is common for "who" to be used in all cases, but this is not recommended in formal speech or writing. I have made that correction throughout the rest of the answer. However, there is a larger issue in the sentence, which I believe is the intended focus in the original source.

I think the issue becomes clearer if you omit the nonessential clause "if he had lived in the 19th century".

He is the kind of person whom people would not have been able to categorise him.

One could write "People would not have been able to categorise him." as a complete sentence, or one could write "whom people would not have been able to categorise" as a relative clause describing "person". However, the example sentence combines the two, beginning as a relative clause and ending with another pronoun "him". In this sentence "whom" is already the object of "to categorise".

We can remove "him" and reintroduce the nonessential clause to get the correct sentence:

He is the kind of person whom, if he had lived in the 19th century, people would not have been able to categorise.

The nonessential clause interrupts the flow of the sentence, which can make it more likely to miss mistakes like this one both in reading and in writing. While the sentence is now correct, an even better sentence might be:

He is the kind of person whom people would not have been able to categorise, had he lived in the 19th century.

Tashus
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  • So if you wanted to keep the non-essential clause, could you just omit 'him' at the end, and be correct? I would assume so. – FroztC0 Jan 09 '19 at 19:46
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    @FrostC0 Yes, and I will note that in my answer that the nonessential clause has no effect. – Tashus Jan 09 '19 at 19:49
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    The odd thing is, on first read, the sentence sounds convoluted but acceptable -- but when you really look at it, it's clear where the error lies. – Andrew Jan 09 '19 at 21:19
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    @Andrew Which is why "quite literate people" will say things like it. You have to do detailed analysis to see how the frame of reference changed across the parenthetical. I think the categorization as "hideously ungrammatical" is a bit of an exaggeration, too. – Barmar Jan 09 '19 at 23:20
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    Resumptive pronouns (which is what him is here) are not standard English, but they are used in some other languages and (I think) in some dialects of English. – Colin Fine Jan 09 '19 at 23:44
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    Removing the "him" would certainly fix the sentence, but I would additionally change the "who" for "whom." – Carlos Arturo Serrano Jan 10 '19 at 01:53
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    @ColinFine's reference, since I had never heard the term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resumptive_pronoun . – LSpice Jan 10 '19 at 02:55
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    I'm fairly certain that this sentence should also be using "whom," as evidenced by the original sentence using "him." – jpmc26 Jan 10 '19 at 05:58
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    On "whom": It depends how much surgery you do to the sentence. You could say "He's the kind of person who, in the 19th century, would not have been categorizable." Or "He's the kind of person whom people in the 19th century would not have been able to categorize." – Quuxplusone Jan 10 '19 at 15:48
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    Yes, it certainly should be "whom", although "who" would be idiomatic for many (probably even most) native speakers. I have added a note and updated the answer. – Tashus Jan 10 '19 at 16:45
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    But compare the final sentence of the answer with "He is the kind of person who could not have been categorised, had he lived in the 19th century" - and then consider why the distinction between "who" and "whom" is dying out in contemporary English, except for a few set phrases and well-known quotations. – alephzero Jan 10 '19 at 22:25
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    re who/whom: Isn't this a AmE/BrE difference? I believe "who" is correct in AmE, but it should be "whom" in BrE. – Martin Bonner supports Monica Jan 11 '19 at 13:21
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    @MartinBonner "Who" is certainly common in casual AmE, but I don't know that I would say that it has become correct. Certainly in formal speech and writing, "whom" is still expected where it is appropriate. Native AmE speakers with more exposure to formal speech and writing tend to use it in casual settings as well. – Tashus Jan 11 '19 at 15:07
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    @Tashus Interesting. We were asked by our AmE customers to change the text in a message box from "whom" to "who". – Martin Bonner supports Monica Jan 11 '19 at 15:14
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    @MartinBonner This is really an issue of "correct grammar" vs. "idiomatic convention", and it depends on the target audience. For example, a legal document would always use "whom" appropriately, but I would never expect a fast-food advert to do so, unless it was specifically being used to make a joke, e.g. about the speech patterns of pretentious people. I don't know your context, but perhaps the customers thought that the target audience of the message would be put off by the formal language. Perhaps even the customers did not know the correct use of "whom"; many native AmE speakers do not. – Tashus Jan 11 '19 at 15:23
  • It’s interesting how much worse the sentence becomes once you replace who with **whom*. –  Jan 28 '19 at 05:00
  • @Barmar What do you mean by "the frame of reference changed across the parenthetical"? – HeWhoMustBeNamed May 07 '20 at 15:46
  • @HeWhoMustBeNamed Before the parenthetical "if he had lived...", the subject is "he". After it, the subject is "people". Each part by itself is grammatical, and interrupting the train of thought with the parenthetical clause causes you to lose track of the subject. This type of error is more likely to happen when speaking extemporaneously than when writing. – Barmar May 07 '20 at 15:55
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As Tashus says, this breaks the general rule that resumptive pronouns are ungrammatical in English, however, if "You often hear quite literate people saying [this]" (i.e. presumably native speakers who speak a prestige dialect), then this instance is grammatical. The rule needs to adapt to encompass modern usage (I'm reminded of people becrying split infinitives).

Wikipedia goes into more depth about the contexts in which resumptive pronouns are seen as grammatical:

... in English, "relative clauses with resumptive pronouns are officially ungrammatical [...] However, they are in fact not uncommon in speech". However, their grammaticality is influenced by linear distance from the subject, embedded depth, and extractability...

In a relative clause, resumptive pronouns are generally not seen as grammatical, however their level of grammaticality improves as they get farther from the head.

In short sentences without a subordinate clause, they are clearly ungrammatical:

He's the one who people categorised *him.

The exact rules for grammaticality aren't well understood, but broadly, the further the pronoun gets from the subject (e.g. the longer the subordinate clause is), the more acceptable it sounds (at what length is dialect dependent). The following may or may not sound acceptable:

He's the one who, had he lived then, people wouldn't've categorised (*)him.

And at the other end we have the example sentence from our "even quite literate people":

He is the kind of person who, if he had lived in the 19th century, people would not have been able to categorise him.

brazofuerte
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    +1 I agree that this sentence is not necessarily flat-out ungrammatical. And mostly because of this answer. I think I would say it's nonstandard and would normally be edited to drop the pronoun at the end. But I don't think I'd go so far as to say it's completely unacceptable. – Jason Bassford Jan 10 '19 at 04:18
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    I would consider it ungrammatical in all these cases; the distance between the pronoun and the subject does not make it less ungrammatical, it just makes it less likely that the ungrammaticality will be noticed. – Michael Kay Jan 10 '19 at 10:50
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    @MichaelKay this isn't just some written 'trick', this is something native speakers actually say - if native speakers say it, it is grammatical (at least in their dialect). – brazofuerte Jan 10 '19 at 12:09
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    @ukemi It's simply wrong to assert that if native speakers say something, it is necessarily grammatical, even in their dialect. The sentence in question is the sort of mistake that I might make (and don't doubt I have made) if I lost the thread of a sentence while speaking. But it's still ungrammatical in my dialect. – Especially Lime Jan 10 '19 at 12:40
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    @EspeciallyLime true, I was being terse - what I meant was, if native speakers frequently use a construction, and think it well formed, and their audience also think it well formed, that is grammatical. Because it doesn't follow an (often outdated) set of prescriptive rules doesn't mean it's ungrammatical (e.g. who replacing whom in almost all modern dialects). – brazofuerte Jan 10 '19 at 12:54
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    @ukemi Well, I simply don't believe that the construction in question is one that native speakers (especially "quite literate" ones) frequently use deliberately, nor that the people who do use it think it well-formed, nor that their audience think it well-formed (in fact OP's quote makes it quite explicit that the audience in this case did not). It's simply the sort of error that arises easily in conversation because one often starts a sentence without having fully thought out where it is going. – Especially Lime Jan 10 '19 at 13:51
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    There's a reason wikipedia merely says this is "not uncommon in speech": people who might easily say something like this would still spot the error when writing and correct it. – Especially Lime Jan 10 '19 at 13:56
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    @EspeciallyLime but native speakers do use these constructions, there's a wealth of literature on it: Resumptive pronouns in English. There are additionally many contexts where native speakers analyse sentences with a resumptive pronoun as grammatical and the corresponding sentence without it as unacceptable e.g. Experimental evidence for a minimalist account of English resumptive pronouns – brazofuerte Jan 10 '19 at 14:07
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    Let us continue this discussion in chat. – brazofuerte Jan 10 '19 at 14:24
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    @MichaelKay there is an analogy to be made between spoken and written languages, but your example is a different case (orthography of a specific word vs grammatical structure of a sentence. A better analogue to your example in spoken language might be two different pronunciations of the same word). Grammar is the underlying structure of a language. Grammatical rules are an attempt to codify this. If the rules don't accurately reflect how native speakers talk, the rules are either incomplete, outdated, or limited to a certain (normally prestige) dialect. – brazofuerte Jan 10 '19 at 18:08
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    @ukemi You're right, it's a failing in the form of prescriptivism. Writing comes from speech, not the other way around. – Jan Kyu Peblik Jan 10 '19 at 18:57
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He is the kind of person who, if he had lived in the 19th century, people would not have been able to categorise him.

This is a rhetorical device known as anacoluthon. The grammatical structure of the sentence shifts as the sentence is spoken — or, you could view it as, two different sentence structures have been smushed together into a single sentence. (Did you notice, I did it there. And (arguably) again!)

The two sentence structures smushed into this one sentence are (with the primary subject/verb in bold):

He is the kind of person who would not have been categorizable by anyone in the 19th century.
If he had lived in the 19th century, people would not have been able to categorize him.

The actual sentence spoken ends up smushing the two grammatical sentences together, typically with a moment of grammatical confusion (indicated by a comma or dash) in the middle.

Wikipedia gives several examples of anacoluthon in English, including Milton's

Had ye been there – for what could that have done?

The two sentence structures smushed up here are

Had ye been there, you could have done something. (Well, actually, no, nothing— never mind.)
It's okay that you weren't there, for what could that have done?

The implication is that the speaker changes his mind halfway through the line.

In your original example, the speaker has not changed his mind about what he wants to say; he's just made a little tweak to how he wants to say it.

For an extreme example — in which the extreme disorder of the words does (well, is implied to) reflect the extreme disorder of ideas behind them — look at Fred Armisen's "Nicholas Fehn" character on Saturday Night Live.

https://twitter.com/sarahcpr/status/760657101404327936

You know, it's— it's the reason... I wake up— I wake up, like, anybody— I was taught... Every— well, most Americans, if you— Education. Any— any border, if Helsinki, if Oslo— I think— any publication, we would— isn't it integral, isn't it the most important— it's the substance, the very idea, that we can unite, that makes me feel, personally—

Quuxplusone
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    I was going to say that that last example read a lot like something our current president would say... And then I saw that the tweet you linked said exactly that :P – V2Blast Jan 10 '19 at 20:17