I apologize to Joey P in advance for this, but I showed this sentence
to my S.O. and an argument ensued. I say it should be ‘whoever,’ he says ‘whomever.’ So, I am asking the Straight Dope grammaticians to help me settle this argument.
My points:
Within each clause, the subject must agree with the verb.
Direct objects may be clauses.
The clause ‘whoever pays him’ is the direct object of the sentence.
His points:
It just doesn’t feel right.
Because it comes right after the verb protect, which requires a direct object.
In order for the last bit to be a clause, ‘whomever’ is needed to attach it to the main clause. (Or something?)
[I’m using object and direct object interchangeably here; I think they’re the same thing?]
I agree with Crazyhorse and will add that since very few people pay attention to the standards regarding whoever/whomever, in informal writing and speech, it’s perfectly fine to simply use whoever.
Nitpick: “whoever pays him” is a noun clause used as the object of an infinitive, not a verb.
The direct object of the main clause is “he’s going to protect [whoever] pays him.”
“whoever pays him” is the object of the infinitive “to protect”, which is being used as an adverb phrase.
"he’s going to protect. . . " is a noun clause used as a direct object.
Other than direct objects, there are indirect objects, objects of other prepositions, infinitives, etc, and retained objects, seen in passive voice when the active voice counterpart contains an indirect object or an objective complement.
This is the right answer but the wrong reason. “I think he’s going to protect him who pays him” is correct (though unidiomatic), because in this case *him *is the object of protect, whereas *who *is the subject of pays. [I think [he’s going to protect him [who pays him]. That’s a different case from [I think [he’s going to protect [whoever pays him].
This is why “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” is wrong. It should be “let him,” because him is the object of let, while who is the subject of is. (Actually it’s usually given as “He… who is without sin, let him cast…”)
“whomever” would be correct if the sentence were, “He’s going to protect whomever he is hired to protect,” for example.
In choosing between “who(ever)” and “whom(ever)”, you consider only its function inside the clause which is a sentence in itself. In the present case it is the subject of that clause and must be “whoever” It is the entire clause that is the object of the verb or of the infinitive. Incidentally, even the subject of an infinitive verb should be in the objective. It is hard to think of an example, but here is a rather contrived one: “He had trouble choosing a costume for the Halloween party because he couldn’t decide whom to be.” That’s the hypercorrect version, but I doubt I would use it.
Everyone here is correct. Your SO is wrong. The key is the function of the pronoun within the clause. “Him” is the object and “whoever” is the subject.
Sometimes. There are two kinds of objects, direct and indirect. For the purposes of this question, the objects are direct objects, so it doesn’t matter.
– I gave him a dollar
Him is the indirect object. A dollar is the direct object.
Very often you can tell which is the direct object, because you can make it into a prepositional phrase by sticking a “to” or “for” in front of it and preserve the meaning.
– I gave to him a dollar, or, more idiomatically, I gave a dollar to him.