"They Spoke English Better than He.": Pronoun Case with Elliptical Clauses of Comparison
by Tina Blue
March 9, 2006
A reader recently asked me which sentence is correct:
~They spoke English better than he.or~They spoke English better than him.The correct sentence is "They spoke English better than he," because the pronoun "he" is the subject of an elliptical clause of comparison:
~They spoke English better than he (did).or~They spoke English better than he (spoke English).An elliptical construction omits one or more words necessary to the grammatical completion of an expression, but the omitted words are understood from the context.
When the elliptical construction is a clause of comparison preceded by "than" or "as," the speaker or writer sometimes puzzles over whether to use the nominative (subject) case or the objective case of a pronoun.
An elliptical clause of comparison preceded by "than" or "as" requires the case called for by the expanded construction. To decide which case to use, simply supply the missing word or words, and the correct case will be self-evident.
In the examples below, I have expanded the grammatical construction by supplying the words missing from each clause:
~I am not as popular as he (is). ~You are much cleverer than I (am). ~Diane does not visit the gym as often as I (do).In the following examples, either pronoun case could be correct, depending on what the sentence is intended to mean. By expanding the construction (supplying the missing words) you can see which pronoun would produce the desired meaning:
~I don't trust her as much as (I trust) him.~I don't trust her as much as he (trusts her).~Apparently the movie entertained you much more than (it entertained) me.~Apparently the movie entertained you much more than I (entertained you).Now let's go back to our original example:
~They spoke English better than he.or~They spoke English better than him.As I said before, the correct version is "They spoke English better than he."
But let's look at what happens to the sentence's meaning if you choose the incorrect pronoun:
~They spoke English better than him (spoke English).Any native speaker of English (and probably most non-native speakers, also) will immediately recognize that sentence as ungrammatical.
