Weird Grammar Problem from Guber

<p>The supervisor was advised to give the assignment to whomever he believed had a strong sense of responsibility, and the courage of his conviction. No error</p>

<p>This problem seemed extremely weird to me because i thought that there was no error, but in Gruber's explanations, apparently whomever is wrong and should be whoever. I thought that whomever should be in fact be used here because i thought that it was the object; I also thought that the objective case for pronouns is to be used in prepositional phrases which it is in.</p>

<p>Never used grubers for anything other than math.
The above question is why.</p>

<p>it is WHOEVER</p>

<p>Give it to whomever you choose.
Give it to whoever wants it.</p>

<p>Whether you should use “who” or “whom” is NOT decided by whether it is a subject or an object of a sentence</p>

<p>whoever
Nancy will probably repeat this rumor to WHOEVER will listen to her.
whomever
My father seems to resent WHOMEVER I invite to
our house.</p>

<p>The supervisor was advised to give the assignment to whoever he believed had a strong sense of responsibility, and the courage of his conviction.</p>

<p>“WHOEVER…had” - ignore the “he believed” because that does not modify “whoever”</p>

<p>So this rule is WRONG:
I’m going to kill whoever likes cake.
Whomever likes cake is going to be killed.
In both sentences, you use “whoever”</p>

<p>1Bob will talk about his friend with whoever/whomever asks him.
2Jenny donates her time to whoever/whomever needs it most.
3Gina will work on the project with whoever/whomever you suggest.
4Whoever/Whomever wins the game will become a millionaire.
5Ask whoever/whomever you want for help with your schoolwork.
6Whoever/Whomever you invite is all right with us.
7Whoever/Whomever angers the bully is in serious trouble.
8Ask whoever/whomever is on the phone to call later.
9Tell her to ride with whoever/whomever lives in her neighborhood.
10Whoever/Whomever we speak to must possess a sense of humor.</p>

<ol>
<li>Whoever - subject of clause.</li>
<li>Whoever - subject of clause.</li>
<li>Whomever - object of verb.</li>
<li>Whoever - subject of sentence.</li>
<li>Whomever - object of verb.</li>
<li>Whomever - object of verb.</li>
<li>Whoever - subject of sentence.</li>
<li>Whoever - subject of clause.</li>
<li>Whoever - subject of clause.</li>
<li>Whomever - object of preposition (or object of phrasal verb)</li>
</ol>

<p>P.S. this won’t appear on the SAT</p>

<p>Read whoever as (him + who)
whomeever as (him +whom)</p>

<p>Now read
The supervisor was advised to give the assignment to whomever he believed had a strong sense of responsibility, and the courage of his conviction. </p>

<p>The supervisor was advised to give the assignement to “him” and he (supervisor) believed “he” had strong sense of sense of responsibility and the courage of his conviction.</p>

<p>So the real object question is determined by later part.</p>

<p>My 2 cents and I am no expert …</p>

<p>wow crazybandit nice explanations and examples…
I read the whole thing before I read the bottom line the mentioned the material was not going to be on the SAT.</p>

<p>Gruber is right, but this point is perhaps too nuanced for an appearance on the SAT.</p>

<p>Yeah I know, it seems like one of those gotcha games to me since I rarely hear the term “whomever”, “whoever”, and didn’t know using one over the other would be obnoxiously wrong.
I plan to take the SAT in October so I’m trying to get adapted to all of this stuff.</p>