How can subjective relative pronouns be replaced with objective relative pronouns?
I quite often find in New York Times that American writers often use an objective relative pronoun–or omitted it all together–where, I strongly believe, a subjective relative pronoun should be present.
Example 1
thanks to well-publicized remarks about the women he suggested were not attractive enough for him to assault
here, the original two chunks are “Thanks to well publicized remarks about the women” and he suggested the women weren’t attractive enough for him to assaulted. How can “the ‘girls’ be the subject of a noun clause embedded in the second chunk? Therefore when the two were combined, it should have been “Thanks to well-publicized remarks about the women who he suggested weren’t attractive enough for him to have assaulted. ” And since it is a subjective relative pronoun, it should not have been omitted.
Example 2
from the arrival of the soldiers, whom they believed had been sent to help them.
“each time the two chunks are from the arrival of the soldiers” and “they believed the soldiers had been sent to help them.” Again, as we can see, “The soldiers” is the subject of a noun clause embedded in the second chunk; thus when the two were combined, it should have been “from the arrival of the soldiers whom they believed had been sent to help them. Reason? Because it is relative nuance, or subjective verb, this was not suggested.
Why languages largely change with the passage of time is only deemed of those with native speakers, and not vice versa. Why such objects are becoming more meaningful than subjective ones?
In the news, what’s the most important thing to know?
Why is your second example with whom is unremarkable; see this Language Log article: Whom loves you? In cases where a human-class
pronoun is associated with
subject function in a subordinate clause that is not the main clause in which it is preposed, usage is divided, but many prescriptive authorities regard whom as incorrect; they would recommend the person who the police thought ___ was responsible instead of the person whom the police thought ___ was responsible, as the relative pronoun is understood as the subject of was responsible (even though it is not the subject of the whole relative clause, the police thought_ Were the police told how much ___ was responsible for this incident and why? Would be highly undesirable by most usage authorities. I would recommend going all the way here.
So it goes against some people’s idea of “the rules”, but it is known that many people use “whom” in situations like this.
The first example is interesting in terms of the pronoun omission; it seems unusual now that you point it out. I’ve been told by others how pronoun omission works in sentences of this type.
Thanks to well-publicized remarks about the women he suggested weren’t attractive enough for him to have assaulted
You are of course right that normally we can’t omit a subjective relative pronoun: it would be ungrammatical to say*thanks
to well-publicized remarks about the women weren’t attractive enough for him to have assaulted
Surely there is no restriction against deleting subject pronoun?
