Learn English – “Lily, not he/him, had planned the party” — Which pronoun is more appropriate

casepronouns

In this sentence should I use "he" in place of 'him"?

He explained that Lily, not him, had planned the party.

Best Answer

In formal and scholastic registers, "he" is appropriate.  It is part of the subject of the subordinate clause. 

The alternatives presented here are that Lily had planned the party and that he had planned the party.  The complete subject of the clause is "Lily [and] not he", which excludes the latter alternative. 

That being said, the informal registers of many English dialects are not exclusively subject-oriented.  For the same reason that the formal "it is I" is often replaced by the common "that's me", the appositive "not him" can easily take the oblique case -- not as an object but merely as a non-topic.

We don't commonly regard English as a topic-oriented language.  Still, we can't explain how the informal variants of copular clauses (such as "that's me") and interrogative clauses (such as "who did you see?") function under a purely subject-oriented framework.