Which when Beelzebub perceived, than whom, We suspect that the real reason he wanted "than whom" is because John Milton, literary sensation who lived in the preceding century, used it in Paradise Lost. His explanation-which was that who has reference only to its antecedent and not to an understood verb or preposition-doesn't have much substance. And good old Bishop Lowth believed that whom and not who should follow than. Whom is used (albeit rarely) as the object of the verb, as in "I wasn't sure whom to ask." Like the other object-of-the-verb pronouns, it's also used as the object of a preposition, and that's where it's most often encountered these days: "I wasn't sure for whom the gift was intended." Someone clarifying for our poor would-be gift-giver would answer with an object pronoun-"It's for them," not "It's for they." These days whom is so stuffy sounding as to be close to archaic, but to those 18th century grammarians it was one of the go-to pronouns.
"But whom is on the other team!!" you say. And this is in fact what's been prescribed by those who would tell you to use your language better: "taller than I," "slower than she," "older than he," "more annoying than they" are, we're told, superior to "taller than me," "slower than her," "older than him," "more annoying than them."īut there's another weird twist: the same grammarians who would have than only be followed by pronouns like I, he, she, and they also asserted that the pronoun whom-and not who-should follow than. If than is only a conjunction, then any pronoun that follows it must be the kind of pronoun that typically starts sentences (and clauses) off-that is, it must be functioning as the subject in the clause it introduces: I, he, she, they. The use has existed since at least the mid-16th century, but two centuries into English speakers' prepositional than habit, those 18th-century grammarians began to weigh in on the matter, and the most influential of them-one Bishop Lowth-said than was a conjunction and only a conjunction. There is no longer an invisible but understood verb there is instead a grammatically very simple comparison.Īny time you see than followed by me or any of the other pronouns that would follow the verb see (such as them, him, her-these are pronouns that function as the object of the verb), it's functioning as a preposition. All we have to do is change that I to me and-voilà-the word than has become a preposition: The main clause is unchanged, but the subordinate clause is the much more succinct "than I am."Īgain the main clause is unchanged, but the subordinate clause is shrunk to almost nothing: it's than I, with the verb am understood but not explicitly present. We can modify our example to something much simpler that still demonstrates than as a subordinating conjunction: "The cat is more determined" is a main clause because it contains a subject and a verb, and it can function as a standalone sentence "than I am to sleep through the cacophony" is a subordinate clause because it contains a subject and a verb but can't function as a standalone sentence. The cat is more determined than I am to sleep through the cacophony. Here is an example of the subordinating conjunction than doing what it does: As a subordinating conjunction, than joins a subordinate clause to a main clause, which is a clause that can be used as a simple sentence by itself. That means that it introduces a subordinate clause, which is a clause (aka, a group of words that includes both a subject and predicate) that does not form a simple sentence by itself. In particular, than has been and continues to be a subordinating conjunction. A conjunction, if you will remember (no judgment here if you don't), is a word that joins together other words or groups of words.
Than has been a conjunction since before the 12th century. Of course, we in fact rely on these categories for all of our language-based communication, whether we do so consciously or not. That's right: whether you say "better than me," "taller than I," or "more annoying than they" has to do with grammatical categories that we typically only consider when a teacher asks us to.
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