Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[fw]

Is the colored part in the following dialogue natural English?

A: The review draft comes back with a large number of edits handwritten on the hard copy by the Chief of Staff of the Council on Environmental Quality.
B: And the chief of staff is whom?
A: Phil Cooney.

I thought #2 is more natural than #1, the original version.
1. And the chief of staff is whom?
2. And the chief of staff is who?

What do you think?

[dragn]

It should be who, not whom. In the sentence "The chief of staff is Phil Cooney," the verb is is a linking verb. It links the subject (chief of staff) with a subject complement (Phil Cooney). Phil Cooney is not an object. Thus, you need a substitute for a subject form: that's who.

Some native speakers (even some well-educated ones) might be tempted to use whom here, thinking it sounds more formal. Unfortunately, they would be wrong.

Greg

[peterteacher]

Yeah, like me

I believe you but could you explain again why "Phil Cooney" isn't an object in that sentence?
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[dragn]

My pleasure. Here's the thing. Linking verbs don't express action. They simply link the subject to the complement, which describes or modifies the subject. The complement doesn't receive any action. For example:

1. Tony hit a student.
2. Tony is a student.

In no. 1, hit is an action verb. The student is the object: the one who got hit.

In no. 2, is is a linking verb. It links Tony to the complement, which just tells us what Tony is. In other words, Tony didn't "is" anybody: the linking verb is doesn't have an object in the same sense that hit does.

Since the complement that follows a linking verb just describes or modifies the subject (rather than receiving any action from it), it takes the same grammatical form as the subject. In a sense, you might say it's on the same grammatical plane as the subject...at least that's one way to think of it.

Of course, as is usually the case in English, there are exceptions. For example, according to the above, it is correct to say "It is I" and "It is he." Indeed it is.

But you and I both know that this doesn't stop even the most well-educated native speakers from using the object forms. "It's me" and It's him" are accepted as perfectly correct by even the most hardcore grammar Nazis.

Hope this makes at least some sense.

Greg