You would never write this, would you, dear reader?
Socrates was a philosopher that believed . . .
No, of course you wouldn’t. You would write,
Socrates was a philosopher who believed . . .
In such cases you use “who” or “whom” for people and “that” for objects, right?
I don’t think I’m being some fussy pedant here, the sort of prescriptivist bore who thinks he’s scoring points with God by insisting that you shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition. This seems really basic to me: a grammatical distinction meant to mark an important difference in attitude depending on whether we’re discussing a person or a thing.
Anyway, my (entirely unrigorous) impression is that over the last few years my students’ grasp of this rule has gotten progressively weaker. I could swear I didn’t see this mistake as much even two years ago.
Manual trackback: Alif Sikkiin
upyernoz | 01-Oct-07 at 10:55 am | Permalink
it depends. “that” is more colloquiel than “who” in that context. i suppose if you’re talking about academic papers you can expect some degree of formality. but the bottom line is that the who/that distinction isn’t always used in common speech and yet our sentences using “that” that way still make perfect sense. there’s no need to get too excited about these things. that’s how languages evolve.
Chris | 01-Oct-07 at 11:19 am | Permalink
Really? Just to be clear, I’m not trying to put on some curmudgeon act here. My own grammar isn’t great. My spelling is a horrendous embarrassment. I’m comfortable with language change. I don’t mind “they” as a singular neuter pronoun. Indeed, I applaud it! And so on. But this just seems clearly wrong, whether the context is academic or not.
OneFatEnglishman | 02-Oct-07 at 8:26 am | Permalink
Sorry, upyernoz, I have to disagree.
I see where you’re coming from – if the person referred to is a generality, you can get away with either usage: “Socrates was the sort of person that would stop you in the street to hold an embarrassing conversation” will do, because you’re citing Socrates as an example of a category which also includes the Ancient Mariner and several street people. In this context “that” at least partly references the category (although “who” sounds right as well).
But “Socrates was a philosopher that asked his friends to sacrifice a cock to Asklepios” still sounds weird because the sense of the phrase governing “that” is unequivocally the unique individual, Socrates, who should be, as here, referred to by “who”, denoting a chap, not a concept or a collective.
I agree there are grey areas, but I’d have thought that Chris’s example in the post was still clearly wrong, colloquially or not. One can probably avoid the issue by using the Damon Runyon construction: “Socrates is such a guy as will…”
upyernoz | 02-Oct-07 at 11:25 am | Permalink
when i read the above responses, i started to wonder if maybe it’s just me.
then i realized that i can’t be just me. if it were just me, chris wouldn’t be getting so many papers using that like that.
so i went up to my wife and said: “plato is the guy that wrote the republic” and asked her if that sentence sounded weird. she said, “no.” “nothing’s strange about it at all?” i asked again. “well, i guess i would use the word ‘who’, but otherwise it sounds okay.”
for whatever that’s worth.
Chris | 02-Oct-07 at 12:22 pm | Permalink
Nice work, Upyernoz. As you know, this blog is all about linguistic fieldwork.
I think it’s much more common in spoken than written English. I challenge you to find an example, though, in a published text (except, that is, within reported speech).
Kegri | 02-Oct-07 at 2:34 pm | Permalink
Oh my. The gauntlet has been thrown!!!
eb | 02-Oct-07 at 9:29 pm | Permalink
I had the who/that distinction drilled into me in grade school. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen “that” for “who” in print, but I don’t have any examples. I just remember thinking, “Isn’t that wrong?” I’ve never done well on grammar tests.
ben wolfson | 03-Oct-07 at 2:36 am | Permalink
How about using “many” for count nouns, such as “year” and “much” for mass nouns?
eb | 03-Oct-07 at 2:52 am | Permalink
That reminds me: in sports, “that” seems to be used often for “team” even though a team is made up of “who”s. In that context “who” sounds wrong to me.
OneFatEnglishman | 03-Oct-07 at 6:34 am | Permalink
Indeed, Ben, how about it? I have a nasty feeling we’ve already lost this one, although it still hurts me as much as apostrophe’s in the wrong place.
Chris | 03-Oct-07 at 7:57 am | Permalink
I think the thing that makes me nervous is just that I’m supposed to be teaching my students how to write standard English. I feel I’m doing a disservice to them if I just give up on a point of grammar out of deference to common usage and they end up being judged for it later in life. That’s the real concern: I’m totally “down,” as it were, with language change and all that. And I couldn’t care less about grammar so long as it sounds right to a speaker of standard English. No Wolfson am I.
Speaking of Wolfson, Ben I would have responded to your hang-out-at-Barbes post, but I already had plans that evening.
Thomas | 21-Oct-07 at 3:53 am | Permalink
Using “that” for people sounds strange to me as well, but I remember reading that it was common until 18th-century grammarians condemned it. Shakespeare uses it: “There was never yet philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently.”
Chris | 21-Oct-07 at 8:20 am | Permalink
Oh wow. Don’t tell me that I’m following some fussy grammarian rather than the actual contours of the English language. Ick.
By the way, Alif had a good post about this too.
Tam | 30-Mar-08 at 10:14 pm | Permalink
Check with Microsoft – I am constantly getting that squiggly green line when I use “who.”