Whoever or Whomever?
Fran from Suttons Bay was watching reruns of Criminal Minds when she heard the following dialogue: “The killer wants to inflict fear not only in
the victim, but in whomever finds the
body.” She wonders if that should have
been whoever.
The preposition in certainly
does need an object, but an object isn’t always a single word; it can be a
phrase or even an entire clause, which is the case here.
When trying to determine whether the pronoun in this sentence should be whoever or whomever, you have to determine exactly what it is doing -- what
its function is. Whoever is the
subject form; whomever is the object
form.
A verb always needs a subject, whether overt or implied. The verb finds in this sentence needs a subject, and in this case
that duty falls to the subject form of the pronoun, whoever. That means that whoever
is automatically locked in and can't be used for two separate functions. The object of the preposition in is the entire clause: “in whoever finds the body.”
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