Mmmm.....more than delicious

We continue are conversation about how words are created and placed in a sentence to communicate information clearly. 

A man is calling a woman. 

We know that the man is the one doing the action because, in English, he is at the beginning of the sentence. The woman is at the end of the sentence, so she is the one receiving the call. In English, we place our direct objects after the action verb. We also do something else that we have inherited from Latin. It's called declension. 

When we change the ending of noun to signify its particular purpose or job in a sentence, we "decline" the noun. Declension is divided into various "cases." We only do this in English with plurals and possession. One girl becomes two girls; something owned by a girl is the girl's. In Latin, there are many more cases, but one is particularly important for us: the accusative case. This case commonly signifies that a noun is being used as a direct object. Typically, an "m" is added to the noun in its singular form. So, 'a man is calling a woman' would read: vir feminam vocat (Notice that the verb typically goes last.)

We see the descendant of this Latin "m" in our pronouns him, them, and whom. These are the pronouns used as objects in a sentence, and can never be used as subjects or predicate nominatives. Whom are you inviting? I'm inviting him. Who is it? It is he. Who says Latin is not useful? Not I!