"...will divide the people (who/whom) most need to be brought together"

Question

With a two-party system, our nation will divide the people (who/whom) most need to be brought together.

Do I use who or whom for this sentence? I think that "people" is the direct object and warrants the use of "whom", but I want to make sure I'm right.

The subject is "the people". I take it the answer is "who", then. Especially because you can substitute "who" for "they" to make the statement "they most need to be brought together". — Thomas, Oct 31 '17 at 00:28
So while the answer above is "who", introducing a new pronoun to take the action of "dividing" changes the answer to whom? — Thomas, Oct 31 '17 at 00:34
One trick to figure it out: "They need to be brought together" or "them need to be brought together"? — Todd Wilcox, Oct 31 '17 at 03:19
The rule I was taught (before it became acceptable to replace almost any "whom" with "who") is that a relative pronoun's case is determined by the relative clause that it introduces, not by the rest of the sentence. In your example, that relative clause is "who(m?) most need to be brought together." Here "who(m)" is the subject, so "who" is correct. It doesn't matter that this relative clause modifies the direct object "people" of "divide" in the rest of the sentence. — Andreas Blass, Oct 31 '17 at 03:33
Related: 1. Should I use who or whom when the subject is plural? 2 The use of nominative “whom” 3 What’s the rule for using “who” and “whom” correctly? — Mari-Lou A, Oct 31 '17 at 09:45
4 How do I choose between ‘who’ or ‘whom’ when the subject pronoun is murky? — Mari-Lou A, Oct 31 '17 at 09:57
Perhaps we could avoid the problem entirely by using "that": "With a two-party system, our nation will divide the people that most need to be brought together." — user218195, Oct 31 '17 at 10:57

score 24 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 31 '17 at 00:32

24

Because the subject of who most need is simply who, you have to use

With a two-party system, our nation will divide the people who most need to be brought together.

If you want a whom example, try

With a two-party system, our nation will divide the people whom you most need brought together.

The relative pronoun takes the case of the role it plays in its clause.

A simple rule of thumb is that if you can get away with omitting the relative pronoun, then it must be whom if you don’t omit, while if you cannot omit it and have the sentence still make any sense, then it must be either who or whose.

answered Oct 31 '17 at 00:32

tchrist

134,759

3

Isn't whom dead yet? – Octopus Oct 31 '17 at 03:24
7

@Octopus: If whom is facing certain death, I hereby promise to give it refuge in my regular speech. – Andriy M Oct 31 '17 at 08:14
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@Octopus Ask not if for 'whom' the bell tolls... – Stig Hemmer Oct 31 '17 at 09:25
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@StigHemmer Never to send to know – Strawberry Oct 31 '17 at 15:12
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@Octopus Isn't who dead yet? *runs away* – David Richerby Oct 31 '17 at 17:25

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 31 '17 at 09:09

2

I like the he/him rule: if you rewrite the clause using he and him and see what makes sense, that tells you whether it's who or whom. Which works better: "he needs to be brought together", or "him needs to be brought together"? I think the former works (ignoring the difficulty of bringing together one person), therefore I think the original sentence needs "who".

answered Oct 31 '17 at 09:09

Dave the Sax

121

You can just as well test with they/them. It only fails for it. (And using she/her will not distinguish whom from whose, but people usually do not have that problem.) – Carsten S Oct 31 '17 at 09:49

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Sep 24 '22 at 19:01

1

Subject | Direct Object | Indirect object | Possessive
======================================================
he      | him           | to him          | his
they    | them          | to them         | theirs
who     | who           | to whom         | whose

As @tchrist pointed out, "the people who need" are the subject of the sentence, so it's who, not whom.

Whom is usually the indirect object of the sentence, as in

"To whom should I make this cheque payable".

When you have a direct object, it's usually who, as in

"He doesn't care who he hurts with his snarky comments".

According to this Oxford Dictionaries blogpost, whether to use who or whom for the direct object is in flux and a matter of personal preference.

edited Sep 24 '22 at 19:01

Glorfindel

14,499

answered Oct 31 '17 at 13:06

Yvonne Aburrow

599

So if it's "technically incorrect," you can use 'who' instead of 'whom'? – Arm the good guys in America Oct 31 '17 at 13:08
I meant that using "who" as the direct object is probably technically incorrect - but "whom" sounds odd in that sentence. – Yvonne Aburrow Oct 31 '17 at 13:12
this is all much easier in German with its well-defined cases (Nominative, Accusative, Dative, and Genitive) – Yvonne Aburrow Oct 31 '17 at 13:13
Why should the way something sounds override technical correctness? – Arm the good guys in America Oct 31 '17 at 13:13
2

depends if you are a believer in prescriptive grammar (telling people what to say/write), or descriptive grammar (describing what people actually say/write). – Yvonne Aburrow Oct 31 '17 at 13:15
according to this Oxford Dictionaries blogpost, whether to use who or whom for the direct object is in flux and a matter of personal preference. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/usage/who-or-whom – Yvonne Aburrow Oct 31 '17 at 13:16
And which are you a believer in? – Arm the good guys in America Oct 31 '17 at 13:18
I fall somewhere between prescriptive and descriptive - for dialect usage (e.g. "I was sat"), I go for descriptive; for things that are just incorrect (e.g. "I would of") I am prescriptive; and this instance, as the Oxford Dictionary blogpost suggests, also falls somewhere between the two. – Yvonne Aburrow Oct 31 '17 at 13:21
I've never before heard that an indirect object is somehow less apt to conflate subject and object than is a direct object. – tchrist Oct 31 '17 at 13:23
see the Oxford Dictionaries blogpost if you don't believe me. It's not about conflating the two; it's about whether the direct object should be "whom" or not. – Yvonne Aburrow Oct 31 '17 at 13:25
My cousin and all her friends say 'I would of been there if I'd knowed about it'? I asked her why and she said it sounds best. But you think she's wrong, and all her friends and neighbors? In fact you say "just incorrect". Are they just incorrect if they think it sounds best? – Arm the good guys in America Oct 31 '17 at 13:28
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription – Yvonne Aburrow Oct 31 '17 at 13:30
@Yvonne I didn't get a ping for your last comment. Anyway, no thanks. I'll take a pass on reading Wikipedia. I don't read it. Don't want to be fed incorrect, incomplete, misleading or outdated material presented in terrible English. Do you have another reference? – Arm the good guys in America Oct 31 '17 at 15:41
1

@Clare They say "would of"? Or they say "would've" and write "would of"? – David Richerby Oct 31 '17 at 17:27
@Clare - let me Google that for you... http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/ling001/prescription.html – Yvonne Aburrow Nov 01 '17 at 09:42
This doesn't have to do with direct objects vs. indirect objects. It's a matter of "whom" being necessary in the exact phrase "to whom". It's fine to use "who" in a sentence like "They are the ones who I gave the book to". – herisson Feb 13 '18 at 20:34
Yes, it does. See the Oxford Dictionaries blogpost that I linked to. – Yvonne Aburrow Feb 14 '18 at 10:21

"...will divide the people (who/whom) most need to be brought together"

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