And, on the other hand,
Never seek to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
That really cannot be improved from how John Donne said it four centuries ago.
Are you sure about this? It seems that there should be a distinction between
“The man who he seemed to think was in charge” and
“The man who seemed to think he was in charge.”
I guess they could both be “who,” but the situations seem to be switching between objects and subjects, and that makes me think one of them should be “whom.”
In “The man who he seemed to think was in charge,” who is the subject for the clause “was in charge.” He seemed to think “who” was in charge. It might be clearer if we wrote “The man who (he seemed to think) was in charge.”
In “The man who seemed to think he was in charge,” who is the subject for the verb “seemed.” Who seemed to think he was in charge? HE seemed to think that he was in charge.
When we are talking about things, and not people, we use the pronouns “which” and “that”, and they have the same form:
- The cat that sat on the mat …
- The mat that the cat sat on …
- The cat, which sat on the mat, …
- The mat, on which the cat sat, …
In English, word order tells you when those pronouns are objects and when they are subjects, and which verbs they go with. You don’t need different forms.
There’s a differfence in meaning in what you write. Sam’s giving his coworkers instructions; Joe’s observing it happen. In “The man who he seemed to think was in charge”, it’s Joe who’s the “he” making an assumption (or to be slightly pedantic, the narrator’s perception of what Joe is thinking). In “The man who seemed to think he was in charge” it’s Sam who’s under the impression (or at least the narrator thinks so) that he, Sam, is in charge. (Although an alternate reading might make Sam “the man who…” and a third, unnamed party, the person who Sam seems to think is in charge.
In my original example, what Joe seems to think is that Sam is in charge. The answer to “what does he seem to think” is “who is in charge”
But in both instances, “who” is the subject of a verb, and properly “who” rather than “whom”, even (especially!) in the most formal of contexts.
And that I think is what’s getting to me. “What” usually represents a direct object, and that makes me think whom. I guess my question is if the who or whom is both the object of a clause and the subject of another one, which do you use?