Relative clauses/ to make somebody do something/ Help me out with these, please.

Hi everyone,

I was wondering if the following sentences are acceptable:

Relative clauses

  • Is this the boy whom you want to keep away from your daughter? (meaning: a parent wants the boy to stay away from his/ her daughter)
  • Is this the boy whom you want me to keep away from your daughter? (meaning: a parent asks me to keep the boy away from his/ her daughter).
  • This is the boy (whom) she wants to keep away from her daughter. (meaning: a mother wants the boy to keep away from here daughter).
  • This is the boy (whom) she wants me to keep away from her daughter. (meaning: a mother wants me to keep the boy away from her daughter)
  • She wants him to keep away from her. (a woman wants that a man leaves her alone)

To make somebody do something:

  • She asked me if I could try and make him stop seeing her daughter.
  • Is this the boy whom you want me to make him stop seeing your daughter?
  • This is the boy whom she’d like me to make him stop seeing her daughter.

I’m not sure about the last two sentences. Could you please correct those sentences which are not correct or give me an alternative.

Thanks
Alexandro.

Your relative clauses list:
‘Who’ is widely accepted instead of ‘whom’, which is often viewed as stilted and old fashioned these days. However, the structures are all okay.

Make somebody do…
The ‘and’ in the first sentence sounds a little more awkward and less fluent than the ‘to’ in the other two sentences, but the second and third sentences are too awkward with the ‘me’. It’s unnecessary and should be omitted:
Even these are awkward and personally I would find another way to say them, using more than one sentence if necessary.
She asked me if I could try to make him stop seeing her daughter.
Is this the boy who/whom (see note above) you want me to make stop seeing your daughter.
This is the boy who/whom she’d like me to make stop seeing her daughter.

Oh Beeesneees, are we getting rid of “whom”? Say it isn’t so!

I’m with you, but I’m telling it like it is :frowning:

I am sure they were saying the same thing when we got rid of “thee”, “thou”, and “ye”. :wink:

Undoubtedly… and I still use ‘whilst’ too.
Perhaps I should have stuck to my guns and not been so lenient about it (I’m certainly not so lenient about a range of other modern permutations) but I wanted Alexandro to be aware of what he was likely to see elsewhere.
It was late*… I was tired… I was weak-willed.

*3.30am here.

In Alexandro’s examples there is really no need to fret about the ‘who/whom’ question because the simplest thing is to leave out the relative pronoun (object) altogether. ‘Whom’ is best left when it is in a stressed position after a proposition. Hanging on to fads about usage doesn’t really help anyone.

Alan

Yes, leaving out the who/whom in all Alexandro’s examples in message 1 makes each sentence more fluent.

Thanks Beeesneees and Alan for helping me out with these sentences.