Ask Language Log: someone, somebody
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Reader David Landfair writes to ask about someone vs. somebody (and, by extension, other indefinite pronouns in -one vs. -body):
A friend was looking over something I'd drafted this morning and corrected "there's somebody here" to "there's someone here," citing a "rule" that someone is subjective case like he/she/who, while somebody is its objective case correlate. He couldn't cite any authority on this, not even Strunk & White, who seem to only mention someone in their verb agreement section.
I've never heard of this rule, and frankly, it seems preposterous, but I've been wrong before. Is there maybe a regional usage (or British?) that he might have grown up with or read somewhere? I had always thought that someone and somebody were universally identical in both meaning and grammar, with perhaps a preference for someone in more formal registers.
Well, yes, it is preposterous.
I'm not sure if we've talked about -one/-body here on Language Log — it's obviously hard to search for — but here's what MWDEU has to say:
Copperud 1980 has a curious note to the effect that it is a superstition that someone in preferable to somebody, and a similar notion is mentioned in Shaw 1987. Somebody and someone are of the same age, according to the OED, and when the OED came out, somebody was much better attested. In the 20th century, however, someone has come on strong, and we seem to have slightly more evidence now [1989] for someone than for somebody. But both, of course, are equally standard; use whichever you think sounds better in a given context.
You could check out corpus studies on the two sets of indefinite pronouns, and, as I recall, you'd find all sorts of interesting variation according to the location / age / sex / class etc. of the speaker, genre, formality of the context, date when the corpora were collected, and so on. But these differences, however fascinating, represent ordinary sociolinguistic variation, not any kind of categorical distinction, much less one tied to syntactic function (subject vs. object, in particular).
My guess is that Landfair's friend had, somewhere along the line, been instructed by someone who believed, in the strongest possible way, that different variants must be strictly distinguished functionally, and had fixed on subject vs. object as the most obvious basis for a distinction (possibly influenced by case distinctions in the definite personal pronouns). So far as I can tell, there is absolutely no factual backing for this "rule", nor have I seen it advanced by any usage writer.
But if you really, really want there to be a rule, then this is the sort of thing you can end up with. Or you could, as MWDEU suggests, just go by your ear in cases like this.
Ray Girvan said,
November 10, 2009 @ 10:25 pm
Can I throw a weird option into discussion (I just compared notes with my wife, also a UK native speaker, and we agree): that "somebody" = weakly pejorative. As in:
"Someone suggested … X"
"Somebody came up with the stupid idea that … Y"
I (we) find the reverse mildly wrong, at the linguistic level of (say) clasping one's hands with the unfamiliar thumb on top.
Eli Morris-Heft said,
November 10, 2009 @ 11:18 pm
@Ray: Nope. AmE speaker here, but I'm fine with both "Someone had the bright idea to X" and "Somebody had the bright idea to X" in sarcastic tones of course. Likewise with the non-sarcastic second sentence you give. I think that one's in the tone of voice – a pragmatic issue.
Nathan Myers said,
November 10, 2009 @ 11:40 pm
"Somebody" has an extra syllable, which can be useful if you're paying attention to your meter. That's enough reason for it to exist as an exact synonym. Think of songs by Sting, "If You Love Somebody", and Blues Brothers "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love". Both use both.
But it's natural for people to try to make the distinction make a difference. In two hundred years I'll bet it won't be preposterous any more.
empty said,
November 11, 2009 @ 12:11 am
Both use both.
I, too, was thinking how ridiculously useful this option must be for songwriters. And now following Ray's comment, sure enough: the first three songs I think of that contain either "somebody" or "someone" contain both: Beatles "Help!", Rod Stewart "Reason to Believe", and "Everybody Needs Somebody Sometime" popularized by Dean Martin.
empty said,
November 11, 2009 @ 12:17 am
(Sorry, I meant Nathan Myers' comment just now.)
clasping one's hands with the unfamiliar thumb on top
@Ray: Didn't you know, there are rules about that, too. You're supposed to put the right thumb on top while making a statement, but put the left on top while asking a question. At least that's what I was taught.
Mr Fnortner said,
November 11, 2009 @ 12:23 am
http://xkcd.com/386/
Hershele Ostropoler said,
November 11, 2009 @ 12:54 am
My, there's an XKCD for everything.
"Somebody" sounds more formal to me, probably because there are more syllables. It's the one I'd expect to find on a government form, say.
John Swindle said,
November 11, 2009 @ 1:13 am
Only one of the two can be abbreviated:
Sb. loves me, I wonder who,
I wonder who she can be.
Joshua said,
November 11, 2009 @ 1:34 am
John Swindle: Actually, I've seen "someone" abbreviated as "s.o." (and "something" abbreviated as "sth.").
However, these abbreviations are used, as far as I can tell, only in dictionaries of English and a foreign language, and by native speakers of foreign languages who were influenced by those dictionaries. They are never used in normal writing by native speakers of English, as far as I can tell.
Joshua said,
November 11, 2009 @ 1:35 am
And just for clarity, the usage situation I described applies to "sb." just as it does to "s.o." and "sth."
Jerry Friedman said,
November 11, 2009 @ 1:55 am
The -one words all sound more formal to me than the -body words. Maybe it's the hypocoristic overtones of the -y, or maybe there's a suggestion of "one rather thinks so" and "gin a body meet a body", or maybe not.
Google Books results:
someone: 500,537
somebody: 287,496
Ratio: 1.74
Now with a marker of formality:
someone albeit: 2,590
somebody albeit: 1,076
Ratio: 2.40
QED! (I'll leave the judgement of any significance to somebody who knows something about statistical inferences.)
Layra said,
November 11, 2009 @ 4:08 am
If I were going to try to justify a difference, it would along the lines of "somebody seems to imply body, which implies passivity", which probably comes from me reading too many murder mysteries wherein bodies are invariably dead. One can do anything one wishes to, but bodies tend to just lie there unless commanded to do something by a mind.
Are there supposedly similar rules for every-, any- and no-?
ellis said,
November 11, 2009 @ 4:08 am
@ Ray
I'd never thought of it before, but I'd agree (UK native speaker): 'somebody' would be my choice if there's something slightly pejorative involved. Thinking about it, this may be because I suspect I prefer the '-body' variants when I possibilities are limited to a known set of individuals: 'Someone left the lights on' if I see a shop lit up at night; 'somebody left the lights on' if I return home and find them on. Equally, 'No-one went to the concert in the square', but 'Nobody came to my party'. I'm now wondering if this is just me.
Mark Etherton said,
November 11, 2009 @ 5:32 am
I'm a UK native speaker as well and I have to say that I agree with Eli Morris-Heft that both 'someone' and 'somebody' work equally well in both of Ray Girvan's examples. To my ear it depends entirely on the tone of voice.
Stan Carey said,
November 11, 2009 @ 6:04 am
A few weeks ago, when writing about no one and nobody (and Peter Noone), I came across a brief corpus analysis on Linguist List (1994) of -body vs. -one. It concluded that their distributions overlap heavily, but that -one is the norm in formal and written contexts, -body in informal and spoken contexts.
jo said,
November 11, 2009 @ 7:25 am
About pejorative uses of someone/body, firstly as a BrE speaker I can't really see the distinction Ray Girvan proposes. More generally, there are interesting pragmatic reasons why it can be pejorative to choose an indefinate form where less ambiguous forms would also be available, i.e. we know the identity of the person we refer to. Perhaps we are pretending to save the face of someone who has done a blameworthy act by choosing not to name them (as we might do sincerely by saying "somebody broke a glass" when we know very well who it was).
mollymooly said,
November 11, 2009 @ 9:49 am
A practical argument in favour of "nobody" is that you avoid having to decide whether to write "noone", "no-one" or "no one". There is no similar argument for "somebody" v "someone"; but if you've already decided on "nobody" then you might want to use "somebody" for consistency. But this provokes another question: to what extent is a given person consistent in their choice of "-body" or "-one"; or even in their choice of "somebody" or "someone"?
JimG said,
November 11, 2009 @ 10:33 am
In the few languages I know (IF they use both 'someone' and 'somebody'), the two are interchangeable. I vote with Sammy Cahn (1957):
When somebody loves you
It's no good unless he loves you all the way
Happy to be near you
When you need someone to cheer you, all the way
et seq
Sili said,
November 11, 2009 @ 11:53 am
I don't recall seeing "sb" for "somebody", but that might well be because that abbreviation is reserved for "substantivus" (=noun) in my lexicon.
I seem to recall something in my 6th form grammar about -one vs -body, but as is the norm for my 6th form knowledge, I don't remember what rule it might be. I'll try to dig it up, since I know where to find at least that particular book.
Zwicky Arnold said,
November 11, 2009 @ 11:56 am
I was almost certain that in actual practice someone and somebody are somewhat differentiated in level of formality, but I didn't say that in my posting for several reasons, the major one being that sociolinguistic, stylistic, etc. differences were not at all the point of the posting, which was about putative grammatical differences.
I also understood that the facts of actual practice are not at all the same thing as the facts about people's impressions, beliefs, or judgments. I know from long experience that if you ask people about these words (and the other pairs), some people will say with great conviction that someone is more formal than somebody, and others will say the opposite, with equal conviction. (See some of the comments above.) It's even possible that everybody's right in their judgments, at least about their own usage (though their judgments might just be an artifact of their thinking of some specific examples and trying to generalize from them). But they can't all be right about general practice. (Well, in general, people are poor at gauging general practice, and for good reason.)
Finally, it's important to stress that the differences in actual practice that have been observed are statistical ones, not a demonstration that "someone is formal and somebody is informal", as some people are inclined to report the observed differences.
John Cowan said,
November 11, 2009 @ 12:09 pm
The version of this that various pedagogues tried to inculcate into me and my classmates was that only someone was fit for written English, and that somebody was unacceptable.
Paul said,
November 11, 2009 @ 4:09 pm
All speculation here, but here goes:
To my ear, "someone" is ever-so-slightly more formal-sounding, perhaps because "one" (as in "an individual") sounds a bit formal, abstract, or bureaucratic. "Somebody," by contrast, contains "body," which sounds more visceral and physical.
I think I probably used "somebody" first as a child before "someone"; I'm also guessing I have always used it much more often than "someone" in informal speech. (I grew up in the southern U.S., btw.)
John Swindle said,
November 13, 2009 @ 5:01 am
I believe there was something (sth.) in Language Log a while back about the foreign learners' abbreviation "sb." I thank Joshua for pointing out "s.o." for "some one." On reflection I don't doubt that the latter exists, despite my original claim. I find myself wondering instead whether there are T-shirts that make good use of any of these abbreviations.
Jeff DeMarco said,
November 13, 2009 @ 2:55 pm
The scansion argument is a good one. The juxtaposition of the -one and -body forms in the same statement seems to have a nuanced effect on the relative meanings of the words. This is probably just a contextual thing. I offer this quote from "The Gondoliers" by W.S. Gilbert:
"when everyone is somebody then no one's anybody"