Whoever

Question

Whoever her parents are must be worried sick.Is this grammatical?

Mister Micawber · Accepted Answer

JungKimWhoever her parents are must be worried sick.Is this grammatical?

Yes, but the style sucks.

Her parents must be worried sick.

BillJ · Answer

JungKim
Whoever her parents are must be worried sick.
Is this grammatical?

Whoever her parents are must be worried sick.

It is grammatical, as MM says, but I'd say that the use of "whoever" makes your example semantically slightly different to Her parents must be worried sick in that that it contributes an additional component of meaning.

From the underlined phrase we understand that "the persons x and y satisfying the description "x and y are her parents", with the implicature that I don't know they are.

The choice of which phrase to use would typically depend on the prior discourse.

Though not especially natural, your sentence is a useful example of how to semantically analyse a fused relative clause in subject function.

AlpheccaStars · Answer

JungKim
Whoever her parents are must be worried sick.
Is this grammatical?

I would write it this way:

Her parents, whoever they are, must be worried sick.

It has two ideas: the identity of the parents is unknown to the writer and under these circumstances, any parents would normally be sick.

Whoever

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