Attraction of nominative, short P.S.

Randy Leedy (RLEEDY@wpo.bju.edu)
Thu, 31 Oct 1996 16:46:13 -0500

I hope this arrives in proper sequence; I fired off its "parent" post
not long ago.

In an earlier post, I wrote

>>>As I've always understood attraction, both direct and indirect, it
can happen only when both cases involved are oblique (i.e., not
nominative or vocative). Can anyone cite an actual instance of
attraction involving both an oblique and a non-oblique case?
<<<

Smyth does cite a clear case of indirect attraction involving the
nominative. I don't have the exact wording of the passage, but an
antecedent that would have been nominative got attracted to the
accusative to agree with a relative pronoun. So I'll certainly stand
corrected on the point of INDIRECT (Smyth calls it "inverse")
attraction from the nominative to an oblique case. Learning is great,
even if it is embarrasing at times. I'm open to correction regarding
DIRECT attraction from the nominative as well (where the antecedent
is explicit), if we can produce a clear instance from a good writer.

Still waiting and looking,

Randy Leedy
RLeedy@wpo.bju.edu