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Pronoun Case
If you’ve ever struggled with German, Latin, or Russian,
you know how nasty case can be. Case inflections display
the relationship between a noun or pronoun and other words in a
sentence. Case in nouns and pronouns is a little bit like tense
in verbs, because both case and tense can cause words to change
form. English has cases, too, but thanks to the “Frenchification”
of English, the language has lost many of its Germanic case inflections.
But not all. Pronouns can get quite complicated—there
are six classes of pronouns—so let’s keep things simple and SAT-related:
Singular Personal Pronouns
| Person | Subjective Case | Objective Case | Possessive Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| First | I | me | my, mine |
| Second | you | you | your, yours |
| Third | he, she, it | him, her, it | his, her, hers, its |
Plural Personal Pronouns
| Person | Subjective Case | Objective Case | Possessive Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| First | we | us | our, ours |
| Second | you | you | your, yours |
| Third | they | them | their, theirs |
The subjective case is used when a pronoun is the subject
of a sentence:
I loved Helen. |
The subject of this sentence, or the person
who is performing or acting the verb loved, is I;
the object of I’s affection is Helen.
The objective case is used when a pronoun is the object
of a sentence:
Helen loved me. |
The possessive case is used to show ownership
(i.e., possession), regardless of where it appears in the sentence:
Possessive subject: My face launched a thousand ships. Possessive object: He looked into my eyes. |
So far, so good. However, things can get dicey when the
sentences get more complex:
My husband is searching for Paris and I. You and me need to get out of Sparta as quickly as possible. Quick, Helen, grab me sword! |
Each sentence is incorrect. How can you tell? Always ask
yourself: “What’s the subject? What’s the object? What shows possession?”
In the first sentence, My husband is
the subject and Paris and I is the object. So use
the objective case for the first person pronoun, not the subjective
case:
My husband is searching for Paris and me. |
In the second sentence, You and me is
the subject, so you need to use the subjective case for the first
person pronoun, not the objective case:
You and I need to get out of Sparta as quickly as possible. |
In the third sentence, the sword belongs
to the person asking Helen to grab it for him. Possession equals
possessive case:
Quick, Helen, grab my sword! |
Another frequently tested feature of pronoun case—one
that usually makes students’ heads explode—is the infamous who vs. whom.
There is no consensus among authorities on how to use who and whom.
However, our only authority is spelled S-A-T, which
has taken a fairly conservative stance on this controversial issue:
Who is subjective; whom is
objective.
(Whose, by the way, is the possessive form.)
So:
The woman who stole my heart keeps it still. |
This is correct. Who refers back to the
woman, who is the subject; therefore, the subjective case
is used.
The woman whom I could not keep from stealing my heart keeps it still. |
This sentence is also correct, at least in SAT-land. Whom refers
not to the subject, the woman, but to the object, I
could not keep from stealing my heart. The following examples
bring out this subtle difference:
| If the question is . . . | then the answer is . . . | because . . . |
|---|---|---|
| Who causes the destruction of Troy? | Helen is the woman who causes the destruction of Troy. | The focus is on the identity of the woman (Helen), which is the subject of this sentence. So, use who. |
| We see the destruction of Troy caused by whom? | Helen is the woman whom we see cause the destruction of Troy. | The focus is on what we, the audience, see. We are the object, so use whom. |
Generally you should use whom after a
preposition:
The woman to whom I gave my heart keeps it still. |
Don’t fret too much over this, as the need for who or whom is
made pretty clear in a given item.
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