Illusion 2: Language change is decay

A. Because Modern English contrasts most immediately with Old English in having lost most of its noun and verb endings, it was natural for Lowth and Murray to suppose that language change always involves loss of features and should be resisted. We tend to harbor a similar feeling today, even though, as we have seen, languages create new material as they lose it.

B. This sense that case distinctions must be retained is why we are still taught to use whom.

1. Notice that we must be taught to use it, because otherwise, what and who are no longer marked for three cases (genitive, dative, and accusative) as they once were.

2. But we only retain whom because it was still perceptible in English when grammarians began standardizing it. Whom was actually a remnant of a full system that had died unmourned. If we are to say Whom did he see? then the question arises as to why we do not say Wham did he give it? for Who did he give it to?, because wham was the dative (“to-”) form of who in Old English.