4 ms·

"Lily, whom despite raising millions in dollars to build their highly anticipated consumer drone, have just filed for bankrupcy." On an entirely unrelated note

"Lily, whom despite raising millions in dollars to build their highly anticipated consumer drone, have just filed for bankrupcy." On an entirely unrelated note, this is an early contender for "most ungrammatical sentence I hope to read today".

theoh 10y ago
Isn't it just missing one comma? (I suppose "whom" should be "who")
- clebio 10y ago
  Lily has (a company has filed for ...). And generally "millions of dollars". meh.
  - JimDabell 10y ago
    Always treating organisations as singular rather than plural ("has" vs "have") is something specific to American English, and treating them as plural isn't ungrammatical in English.
- microtherion 10y ago
  "whom" is wrong in 3 different ways in my opinion: (1) It should be "who", not "whom". I find that hypercorrection immensely annoying. (2) But actually, since Lily is a company, it should be "which", not "who". (3) But even "which despite raising […] has filed" is wrong. It actually should just be "Lily, despite raising […], has filed" or "Lily, which raised […], has filed". "which despite raising" subordinates "has filed […]", so the whole sentence turns into a noun phrase missing its verb phrase.
  - theoh 10y ago
    I'll accept the who/whom complaint. As another poster has said, your point 2 is not a universally agreed rule. See http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001874.html http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001874.h... Your point 3 is totally valid, I assumed you were quoting a wannabe noun phrase. I wasn't paying enough attention.
    - microtherion 10y ago
      Point 2 to me was not about singular/plural, but about companies being animate/inanimate. It turns out that there used to be a very clear preference for "which", but by now, "who" is winning out in US usage: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=company+which%2Ccompany+who&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=5&smoothing=0&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ccompany%20which%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ccompany%20who%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=company+which%...

theoh 10y ago

Isn't it just missing one comma? (I suppose "whom" should be "who")

clebio 10y ago
Lily has (a company has filed for ...). And generally "millions of dollars". meh.
- JimDabell 10y ago
  Always treating organisations as singular rather than plural ("has" vs "have") is something specific to American English, and treating them as plural isn't ungrammatical in English.
microtherion 10y ago
"whom" is wrong in 3 different ways in my opinion: (1) It should be "who", not "whom". I find that hypercorrection immensely annoying. (2) But actually, since Lily is a company, it should be "which", not "who". (3) But even "which despite raising […] has filed" is wrong. It actually should just be "Lily, despite raising […], has filed" or "Lily, which raised […], has filed". "which despite raising" subordinates "has filed […]", so the whole sentence turns into a noun phrase missing its verb phrase.
- theoh 10y ago
  I'll accept the who/whom complaint. As another poster has said, your point 2 is not a universally agreed rule. See http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001874.html http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001874.h... Your point 3 is totally valid, I assumed you were quoting a wannabe noun phrase. I wasn't paying enough attention.
  - microtherion 10y ago
    Point 2 to me was not about singular/plural, but about companies being animate/inanimate. It turns out that there used to be a very clear preference for "which", but by now, "who" is winning out in US usage: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=company+which%2Ccompany+who&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=5&smoothing=0&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ccompany%20which%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ccompany%20who%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=company+which%...