Pronouns "whom" and "whose"

Question

Hi. Please help.1.  Could we use the pronoun "whom" to refer to a country? I think we could.Whom did it gain indepence from?2. Could we use the pronoun "whose" to refer to something other than a person or people? I think we could. I am sorry for not providing you with a complete example sentence. Could we also use it to refer to a company? Any others you can think of?He was a member of a group whose membership consisted mainly of ...

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

1 and 2:  Yes, indeed!

Guptavandy · Answer

Hi

If we are referring to the people of a country or company, we can use 'whom ' or 'whose' but not if we are referring to only company or country.

Example:

1. Which country's poulation is the highest?
2. From whom India got indepence o in 1947?

Mister Micawber1 and 2: Yes, indeed!

Mister Micawber · Answer

Sorry, Gupta, but it is perfectly acceptable and quite common to use who/whom/whose for non-personal nouns.

Here are some authentic examples:

- comfortable in each other's company, in the presence of this place whose legacy they share.
- a mere teller of historical tall tales whose inauthenticity is known up front

- Organ and tissue pools with exchangeable carbon are represented by circles whose area is proportional to the carbon pool in that compartment
- They suggested climate change is one of three processes whose threshold already has been exceeded
- the Sunni-dominated Anbar region -- an erstwhile stronghold of al Qaeda whose tribes were beginning to abandon the terrorist group
- it is worth recalling that hardly ever in modern history have undersized nations whose relations with their neighbors have been drenched in rancor

Tell me, how would you compose this sentence without 'whose'?--

He was a member of a group whose membership consisted mainly of

Pronouns "whom" and "whose"

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