To whom/whom

To whom did you give the letter?

Whom did you give the letter TO?

What is differnce between "to whom" and "whom".

JT: When we "front the preposition", Hanuman, 'whom' is used. It's a more formal construction that's not as common in speech.

In speech, you'd be more likely to hear,

Who did you give the letter to?

In addition, in Latin, which is where English gets its who, whom distribution, word order is not fixed, so the purpose of a suffix (e.g., -m, and so on) is to tell us the word's grammatical function (e.g. subject, object, etc). In terms of traditional grammar, whom is the more preferred as the object of a preposition (e.g., to), who the more preferred as the sub

Right, English used to ditinguish between subjects and objects by using a suffix such as Latin did, but gave up this tradition to follow an analytical structure (often: preposition + noun, noun here in a widened sense) that also required a fixed word order.

Agreed, and the suffix (-m) still carries meaning, though, right?

1. To whom did you give the letter?
2. Whom did you give the letter to?

3. Whom did you give the letter?
4. *Who did you give the letter?

Example 3. is grammatical without the preposition To, to, whereas example 4. is ungrammatical without eith

I have read some linguistic articles that argued that
(1)"Bob taught the students English" and
(2)"Bob taught English to the students"
are slightly different in the meaning.

According to them, (1) means the students actually learned at least some English from Bob
but (2) doesn't connote anything like that: it states merely the fact that Bob was an Engl

Nice addition, paco.

Yes. I agree, and here's my supporting evidence.

(1) Bob taught (V) the students (IO) English (DO). students (learned) English
(2) Bob taught (V) English (DO) to the students (IO). Bob taught English

'taught', a ditransitive verb, subcategorizes for the following semantic structure: DO + IO. Now, the DO and the IO are not equa

Hello Casi

Thank you for the explanation. It surpasses in clearness any articles I've ever read. Now I'm wondering if this kind of argument can be applicable to any ditransitive verbs. How about in the case of "wrirte", for example. Does "I wrote her a letter" imply "she accepted an read it" and "I wrote a letter to her" does not necessarily imply so. Could we understand this way?

Casi:

3. Whom did you give the letter?

Example 3. is grammatical without the preposition To,

JT: Are you sure, Casi? I have some misgivings on this.

You're most definitely welcome, paco. (The supposed 'clearness' may have to do with my background in the field of linguistics. That is, my knowledge has a history. It seems as if we have read a great deal of the same papers.)

Incorporation doesn't apply to all ditransitives. Ditransitives are divided into two basic groups: verbs like, 'teach', which allow IO incorporation, and verbs lik

Although not the Standard distribution, I agree, but given certain contexts, native North American speakers often omit "to". That is, "to" doesn't require overt realization in all instances:

Surface Structure: Whom did you give the letter (to)?
Underlying Structure: Whom did you give the letter to?

EXAMPLES
Pat: I gave the letter to Max.
Sam: Who did you give th