'Let him who' or 'Let he who' ?
Vesa Raiskila
I and a friend of mine have been debating about the correct way of using
certain personal pronoun--relative pronoun combinations, such as:
"Let him who is innocent cast the first stone." OR
"Let he who is innocent cast the first stone."
(The basic structure is, of course, "let him cast the first stone", but
what effect, if any, does the addition of the relative clause - "who is
innocent" - have on the structure?)
And
"Give it to he who is innocent." OR
"Give it to him who is innocent."
(Here the basic structure is "give it to him", but again, does the
addition of the relative clause - "who is innocent" - affect the
construction?)
We would be very grateful for your opinion on which of the above
sentences are "correct" or at least "preferable". These kind of
structures are not, for some reason, covered in any of the grammar books
I have.
Thanks in advance,
Vesa
--
**To reply by e-mail, please delete REM. from my e-mail address.**
Markus Laker
Vesa Raiskila <rem.r...@cc.jyu.fi>:
> I and a friend of mine have been debating about the correct way of using
> certain personal pronoun--relative pronoun combinations, such as:
>
> "Let him who is innocent cast the first stone." OR
>
> "Let he who is innocent cast the first stone."
>
> (The basic structure is, of course, "let him cast the first stone", but
> what effect, if any, does the addition of the relative clause - "who is
> innocent" - have on the structure?)
I'm not too surprised that your grammar books don't cover this: this
kind of construction doesn't often come up in everyday speech, after
all. Let me quote from the _Oxford English_, 1986 edition:
>>>>>>
*He who* and *she who* are correctly used when *he* and *she* are the
subject of the main clause, and *who* is the subject of the relative
clause:
He who *hesitates is lost*
She who *was a star in the old play may find herself a super in
the new* (C. S. Lewis)
In these examples *he* and *she* are the subjects of *is lost* and *may
find* respectively; *who* is the subject of *hesitates* and *was*.
*He who* and *she who* should not be treated as invariable. They should
change to *him who* and *her who* if the personal pronouns are not the
subject of the main clause:
*The distinction between the man who gives with conviction and
him* (not *he*) *who is simply buying a title*
Similarly *who* must become *whom* if it is not the subject of the
relative clause:
*I sought* him whom *my soul loveth* (Authorized Version)
<<<<<<
To answer your question more directly, you should say 'let him who is
guilty cast the first stone'.
I'd like to compliment you on your English, which is excellent. But may
I make a suggestion about what follows?
> These kind of
> structures are not, for some reason, covered in any of the grammar books
> I have.
'These kind' doesn't agree, and needs changing. This is a common error
among native speakers; I expect that's where you picked it up. If your
English is good enough for you to be curious about 'he who', you'll
probably want to use something like this:
This kind of structure is not covered . . . .
Structures of this kind are not covered . . . .
If there are several types of structure that are not covered in the
book, you might prefer:
Structures of these kinds are not covered . . . .
Markus Laker.
[Posted and mailed]
--
My real address is 'laker at tcp.co.uk'.
Don't use this: msln...@contax.co.uk
Donna Richoux
Vesa Raiskila <rem.r...@cc.jyu.fi> wrote:
> I and a friend of mine have been debating about the correct way of using
> certain personal pronoun--relative pronoun combinations, such as:
>
> "Let him who is innocent cast the first stone." OR
>
> "Let he who is innocent cast the first stone."
>
> (The basic structure is, of course, "let him cast the first stone", but
> what effect, if any, does the addition of the relative clause - "who is
> innocent" - have on the structure?)
You have to remember, this is a saying from the Bible, it is not a
common sentence structure. The King James Version of the Bible was
printed in 1611 and used unchanged for many years, so it is full of
archaic and puzzling language.
Last year I spent a while looking for the actual reference for this
saying, which was made difficult by the fact that some versions of the
Bible relegate the passage in which it occurs to a footnote, on the
grounds that it is not authentic. In the King James Version, John 8:7,
you will find it:
"So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto
them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at
her."
You can find the whole story and indeed the entire King James Bible at
www.scriptures.com.
The Revised Standard Version (1962) relegate John 8:1-11 to a footnote
and has:
"And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, 'Let
him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.'"
In modern speech, this phrase is reformulated in many ways, as my
searches last year in Altavista showed.
> And
>
> "Give it to he who is innocent." OR
>
> "Give it to him who is innocent."
Any American I've ever known would dodge the question and say "Give it
to the one who is innocent."
> (Here the basic structure is "give it to him", but again, does the
> addition of the relative clause - "who is innocent" - affect the
> construction?)
>
> We would be very grateful for your opinion on which of the above
> sentences are "correct" or at least "preferable". These kind of
> structures are not, for some reason, covered in any of the grammar books
> I have.
Perhaps someone else will talk about what would be "correct grammar"
here; I ain't touching it.
Does the Bible in Finnish translate John 8:7 into a perfectly ordinary
sentence?
Best wishes --- Donna Richoux
James Follett
In article <5tpnon$8...@snews1.zippo.com>
j...@sunline.net.spamchopper "Jonathan Mason" writes:
>This reminds me that in the depiction of this scene in the somewhat
>blasphemous movie "Life Of Brian", a stone whizzes out of the crowd and
>Brian exclaims "Mother!" (You might need to look up Immaculate
>Conception etc. to catch the theological drift of this.)
Look up `blasphemous', watch `Life of Brian' again, and come back and
tell me what was blasphemous about it, or even `somewhat' blasphemous.
Your comment about Immaculate Conception doesn't make sense. Christ's
conception may have been `immaculate' but his birth most certainly
was not. His mother was his mother in that sense of the word. Besides,
it was Brian who made the comment. We can assume his conception and
birth was normal (ignoring the fact that his mother was played by a man).
:)
--
James Follett -- novelist (`Yes -- but apart from cleaning drinking
water, decent roads, making the streets safe to walk at night, providing
a system of law, and building schools, what have the Romans ever done for
us?' Latin verbs are a dammned good excuse for an armed uprising.)
Peter Schultz
Jonathan Mason wrote:
> //snip
> > "He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to
> > throw a stone at her." - New American Standard Version (1971)
> >
> It doesn't say much for the authors of the NASV that with the
> benefit of an additional three hundred and seventy years of
> scholarship all they can do is change "that" to "who" in the
> first part of the sentence, change "cast" to "throw" (how
> about "pitch"), add in a few words, and still come out with
> something that sounds horribly stilted.
Yes, but that was a quarter century ago, so it's not stilted
enough by today's standards. "He/she who is without sin among you,
let him/her be the first..."
Jonathan Mason
david...@neosoft.com (David Carson) wrote:
>On Sun, 24 Aug 1997 07:05:57 +0300, Vesa Raiskila <rem.r...@cc.jyu.fi> wrote:
>
>[snip prelude]
>
>>"Let him who is innocent cast the first stone." OR
>>
>>"Let he who is innocent cast the first stone."
>>
>>(The basic structure is, of course, "let him cast the first stone", but
>>what effect, if any, does the addition of the relative clause - "who is
>>innocent" - have on the structure?)
>
>
>Your example is a paraphrase of John 8:7, which does not pose this problem when
>the syntax of the original Greek manuscripts is followed:
>
> "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." -
>King James Version (1611)
Gregory Monsoux
A somewhat belated further thought :
In the famous pre-battle speech at Agincourt in Shakespeare's "King Henry
the Fifth", Henry says (in the Alexander Text) : "...proclaim it...that he
which hath no stomach to this fight, let him depart ;..."
Poetic, and immediately intelligible.
Markus Laker <skipthis...@tcp.co.uk> wrote in article
<340a7a45...@news.tcp.co.uk>...
> tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux):
>
> > Does the Bible in Finnish translate John 8:7 into a perfectly ordinary
> > sentence?
>
> Without speaking a word of Finnish I am confident that the Finns have
> several Bible translations to choose from. English has a wealth of
> translations: some value fidelity to the original texts over idiomatic
> English, some aim for vividness at the expense of accuracy, some are
> new, some are very old indeed, some have embarrassing misprints, some
> are aimed at children or non-native speakers of English, some are used
> only by one denomination or sect, at least one was translated through
> Latin to make it more accurate, some include the Apocrypha
> (deuterocanonical books), most don't -- and on it goes.
>
> Although there are fewer speakers of Finnish than of English, I'd be
> surprised if any one Finnish translation had a monopoly.
>
> Markus Laker.
Peter Schultz
Vesa Raiskila wrote:
>
> Donna Richoux wrote:
> >
> > Vesa Raiskila <rem.r...@cc.jyu.fi> wrote:
> >
> > > I and a friend of mine have been debating about the correct way of using
> > > certain personal pronoun--relative pronoun combinations, such as:
>
>
> > > "Give it to he who is innocent." OR
> > >
> > > "Give it to him who is innocent."
>
> > Any American I've ever known would dodge the question and say "Give it
> > to the one who is innocent."
>
> the English language about deciding on the "correct" use of such a
> central element of language as personal pronouns...
I agree that it is very interesting indeed. It appears that we are
somewhere in a major grammar reshuffle. The way people's mental
grammar is handling the roles played by the various personal
pronouns -- such a basic and common element of the language --
is changing in front of our eyes (or ears).
When comparing Latin grammar to French or Spanish, or reading about
The Great Vowel Shift, I sometimes wonder what it was like for the
speakers while the changes were happening. Weren't things confused?
I think maybe our current personal pronoun situation can give us a
feel for that, just between you and I.
Vesa Raiskila
Markus Laker wrote:
> tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux):
> > Does the Bible in Finnish translate John 8:7 into a perfectly ordinary
> > sentence?
> Without speaking a word of Finnish I am confident that the Finns have
> several Bible translations to choose from.
But Markus, everyone who can say "sauna" speaks a word of Finnish...
You're right, we have more than one translation, although "several"
*might* exaggerate the number somewhat (I don't know the exact number,
but 2-3 may be a good guess in the case of a five-million-people
nation). Luckily (for progressive believers at least), one of them is
fairly recent.
Brian J Goggin
On 27 Aug 1997 02:08:25 GMT, mat...@aol.com (Matola) wrote:
[...]
>Is sisu listed in the OED or any other Sufficiently Large Dictionary?
It's not in the OED.
bjg
Brian J Goggin
On 27 Aug 1997 21:11:13 GMT, tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux) wrote:
[...]
>If anyone is afraid this thread is becoming "Learn Finnish in Six
>Months," please be assured we would move it to e-mail long before that
>point.
Sorry for snipping the meat; no disrespect intended. Just wanted to
say that this is very interesting.
And hello to Vesa.
bjg
Albert Marshall
Donna Richoux
>Markus Laker
and
>> > Vesa Raiskila
Got involved in
>> > > In Finnish everything is inflected all the
>> > > time (we have 15 cases), which makes the correct forms so obvious in
>> > > many cases (pun intended).
>>
<Snip>
>>
>> auto (nominative)
>> autoa (accusative?, e.g. he fired 'at the car')
>> autoon = into the car
>> autossa = in the car
>> autosta = out of the car
>> autolla = on the car (e.g. on the hood)
>> autolta = off [?] the car (e.g. off the hood)
>> autolle = onto the car (e.g. onto the hood)('Vesalle'='to Vesa')
>> auton = the car's (genetive)
>> autotta = without a car (autoitta = without cars)
>> autona = as a car (obviously one wouldn't say so)
>> autoineen = with his/her car (Finnish doesn't distinguish gender, which
>> btw is a blessing, as we don't have to use constructions like 'he or
>> she' or 'him- or herself' in e.g. scientific text)
>>
>> Does that appear easy or complicated?
>
>That depends on this: is there only the one list of endings, the same
>for all nouns? Or is there one list for words like "auto," and another
>list of slightly different endings for words like "sauna," and another
>list of endings for words like "pipo" and so on and so forth? If you
>just have the one list, well, that sounds no worse than using English
>prepositions. {Sorry my Latin experience is so long ago, I can't
>remember what those categories of nouns are called, not declensions, I
>think, maybe classes.]
>
Declensions when I went to school. 5 of them, although I seem to
remember that the second had two or three variants as well.
Similarly I believe that there were nominally 5 conjugations of regular
verbs.
--
Albert Marshall
Executive French
Language Training for Businesses in Kent
01634 400902
Mary F. Heath
Nor was "sisu" in the Insufficiently Large Dictionary which lay at
hand's reach, _The American Heritage Dictionary of The English Language,
Third Edition_ (1996; orig.pub. 1992). I have a vague recollection of
"Sisu!" as an exclamation much beloved by Finnish-Americans of my
acquaintance.
Two pages away from the spot where "sisu" would have been, I saw a
black-and-white photograph of O. J. Simpson in the top righthand corner,
an illustration of this entry in its entirety:
"Simpson, O(renthal) J(ames). Born 1947. American athlete who was
the first professional football player to rush more than 2,000 yards in
a season."
One wonders what the Fourth Edition will use as its definition.
m.h.
Richard M. Alderson III
In article <340470...@cc.jyu.fi> Vesa Raiskila <rem.r...@cc.jyu.fi>
writes:
>No, on the contrary - but some of them are rare. The easiest way to explain
>their function is to give examples, which I do using the Finnish (loan) word
>'auto' (car). (As English has only two cases, I don't think there are English
>terms for most Finnish cases.)
>auto (nominative)
>autoa (accusative?, e.g. he fired 'at the car')
>autoon = into the car
illative
>autossa = in the car
inessive
>autosta = out of the car
elative
>autolla = on the car (e.g. on the hood)
essive
>autolta = off [?] the car (e.g. off the hood)
ablative
>autolle = onto the car (e.g. onto the hood)('Vesalle'='to Vesa')
translative? I forget.
>auton = the car's (genetive)
>autotta = without a car (autoitta = without cars)
I forget
>autona = as a car (obviously one wouldn't say so)
I don't know this one, and my "Teach Yourself Finnish" is at home.
>autoineen = with his/her car
comitative
>As you can see, I cannot give examples of all of the cases (but those should
>be the most common ones). Finnish is an "inflected" language (I can't remember
>the corresponding term for a non-infecting language like English), and cases
>are among its central linguistic devices.
English is an weakly inflecting language, having lost most of its inflections
over the past 1500 years. *Mandarin Chinese* is a non-inflecting language.
>In this Finnish, Hungarian (which has 21 cases) and Estonian differ from
>(most) other European languages, which have developed in precisely the
>opposite direction.
Although Lithuanian, at least, has not only not lost the old Indo-European
cases, but has created several new ones to match those of Finnish and Estonian.
--
Rich Alderson You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
what not.
--J. R. R. Tolkien,
alde...@netcom.com _The Notion Club Papers_
Vesa Raiskila
> > auto (nominative)
> > autoa (accusative?, e.g. he fired 'at the car')
> > autoon = into the car
> > autossa = in the car
> > autosta = out of the car
[other examples snipped]
> > Does that appear easy or complicated?
> That depends on this: is there only the one list of endings, the same
> for all nouns?
Yes, there is only one list for all nouns. However, a phenomenon called
"consonantial gradation" complicates things a little. This appears in
certain words, such as 'lauta' (=board). From the earlier examples you
would expect the genetive to be 'lautan' (lauta + n), but the correct
genetive form is 'laudan'. Similarly, the genetive of 'takka'
(fireplace) is 'takan' (not 'takkan'), etc. However, this doesn't affect
all of the cases of such words.
If this looks slightly complicated, one feature that makes Finnish
*easier* than English is that we have no articles, as the definiteness
or non-definiteness of a word or expression is determined purely by the
semantic context. As you know, the use of articles is one of the most
difficult aspects of English for a lot of foreign learners.
Best regards,
Tom
Vesa Raiskila (rem.r...@cc.jyu.fi) wrote:
: In this Finnish, Hungarian (which has 21 cases) and Estonian differ from
: (most) other European languages, which have developed in precisely the
: opposite direction.
Hungarian has 21 cases? Istenem! When I looked at Magyar (admittedly
briefly) in my youth, I came away with the impression that there were
only two. Of course, the text was lousy (read Edmund Wilson's essay,
"My 50 Years with Grammars & Dictionaries" for details), but you'd
think they would have gotten the number of cases right.
How do you say "Sheesh!" in Magyar?
Tom Parsons
--
--
t...@panix.com | Life is not so rich in sources of pleasure
| that one can afford to neglect any of them.
http://www.panix.com/~twp | --Linus Pauling
F.Baube
yes, but I don't know any Finns who know the
names of ALL these cases.
it's a useless exercise in memorisation of
Latin-derived terms.
it's simpler just to learn the forms and use them !
Steinar Midtskogen <stei...@ifi.uio.no> wrote:
> [Vesa Raiskila]
> > > >autotta = without a car (autoitta = without cars)
> >
> > > I forget
> >
> > Me too...
> Abessive.
> -Steinar
fr...@kirjasto.kaarina.fi.screw.spam
Colin Fine
In article <34024B...@erols.com>, Peter Schultz <schu...@erols.com>
writes
[snip]
>> This is most interesting - this uncertainty of even native speakers of
>> the English language about deciding on the "correct" use of such a
>> central element of language as personal pronouns...
>
>I agree that it is very interesting indeed. It appears that we are
>somewhere in a major grammar reshuffle. The way people's mental
>grammar is handling the roles played by the various personal
>pronouns -- such a basic and common element of the language --
>is changing in front of our eyes (or ears).
Alternatively, it might just be an example of Stephen Pinker's
observation that all the things that native speakers are accustomed to
say are - precisely - the correct grammar of the language, and all the
things that they have to be laboriously taught to say (and a fortiori,
that they argue about whether to say) are not in fact the grammar of the
language but a chimaera invented for the sole purpose of Putting the
Lower Orders In Their Place. [He didn't say it quite like this.]
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
| Colin Fine 66 High Ash, Shipley, W Yorks. BD18 1NE, UK |
| Tel: 01274 592696/0976 436109 e-mail: co...@kindness.demon.co.uk |
| "Please don't help me. I need to learn to walk by myself. |
| Only this - remind me when I won't." -K.B.Brown |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Schaefer
In article <1L2zQTA5...@kindness.demon.co.uk>, Colin Fine
<co...@kindness.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <34024B...@erols.com>, Peter Schultz <schu...@erols.com>
> writes
>
> [snip]
>
> >> This is most interesting - this uncertainty of even native speakers of
> >> the English language about deciding on the "correct" use of such a
> >> central element of language as personal pronouns...
> >
> >I agree that it is very interesting indeed. It appears that we are
> >somewhere in a major grammar reshuffle. The way people's mental
> >grammar is handling the roles played by the various personal
> >pronouns -- such a basic and common element of the language --
> >is changing in front of our eyes (or ears).
>
> Alternatively, it might just be an example of Stephen Pinker's
> observation that all the things that native speakers are accustomed to
> say are - precisely - the correct grammar of the language, and all the
> things that they have to be laboriously taught to say (and a fortiori,
> that they argue about whether to say) are not in fact the grammar of the
> language but a chimaera invented for the sole purpose of Putting the
> Lower Orders In Their Place. [He didn't say it quite like this.]
Actually, what this really is is further evidence of hypercorrection
brought about by do gooder prescriptivists who have so paralyzed the
average speaker's natural instincts that people are coming up with
grammatical constructions which are far more ungrammatical than anything
the prescriptivists hoped to prevent. To wit:
After hearing little Bobby say "Me and Joey went to the movies" his
teacher said to him "That's 'Joey and I'". In fact his teacher said that
so many times that now Bobby is afraid to use the pronoun "me" at all. He
now says"Between you and I..." and "Could you do this for my wife and
I?". Later he gets a job as a newscaster on a Washington D.C. television
station and starts saying things like "This will only cause more
difficulty for he and she." [!]
All these examples are from things I have actually heard people say. I
hear "for X and I" so much that I am about to hemmorrhage. (I have a
friend who *insists* that constructions like "for him and I" sound more
correct to her!)
One of two things is occurring:
(1) We are losing what little was left of the objective case and are on
our way to becoming a completely analytic language.
(2) We are finally seeing what nitwits most people are.
Does this piss anyone else off, too?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Mark Schaefer | "I keep wondering if there is an after-
digitalNATION | life, and if there is will they be
Mark_S...@csgi.com | able to break a twenty?" - Woody Allen
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