Language Log

Does and/or mean "and and or", or "and or or"? That is, if I say I am interested in A and/or B, do I mean I'm interested in A and B and I'm interested in A or B, or do I mean that I'm interested in A and B or I'm interested in A or B? (You may want to say that it means I'm interested in A and B and/or I'm interested in A or B; but in that case I repeat my question.)

A page at www.justice.gc.ca recommends that people drafting legislation should "consider using the third-person pronouns 'they', 'their', 'them', 'themselves' or 'theirs' to refer to a singular indefinite noun, to avoid the unnatural language that results from repeating the noun".

The page closes with an excellent set of references and quotations — the sources include the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage and the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Language Log is not cited (nor should it have been), but we may have had some indirect influence, perhaps by providing a theological argument that retains some force even in a secular society like Canada's, or perhaps by offering protection against the intemperate irrationality that these issues sometimes provoke.

I've been getting some mail about tricky cases involving the choice between who(ever) and whom(ever), in particular the question of which form to use in examples like

(1) Whoever/whomever you meet there is bound to be interesting.

  versus

(2) Whoever/Whomever meets you there is bound to be helpful.

There are two factors at work here, one of usage and style and one of syntactic structure, but the big point is that for many speakers and writers. whomever is allowed (or required) in (1), but not allowed in (2).  The Wikipedia page on Who gets this right, and correctly attributes the choice of whomever in (1) to the fact that the pronoun is the direct object of meet there.  But it also says that whomever is the SUBJECT of is in (1), which is downright bizarre — and was absolutely baffling to my correspondent Ethan.  And at first, to me, though now I think I now know what's going on.

On the wall behind the table where I usually sit to blog, there's a framed print, shown in faded miniature on the right. The title below the picture is "Dr. Syntax Making a Discovery".

But there's not a subjunctive or a preterite in sight. The couple in the foreground, though perhaps engaged in discovery, don't look very intellectual. The old geezer in the background seems to be examining a tree — but it's a willow, not a representation of constituent structure or grammatical relations. What gives?