Learn English – “Being [he/him] is not easy.” Which is prescriptively “correct”

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"It is I" follows a well-known prescriptivist rule

This question is about prescriptive grammar. It’s a fairly well-known prescriptivist rule that “me, him, her, them” (in other words, pronouns in the objective case) should not be used after forms of the verb “to be” in sentences like “It’s me” or “The culprit is him.” The recommended alternative is to use “I, he, she, they” (pronouns in the nominative case) instead. Constructions of the form “it is me” can apparently be found as far back as the 16th century, but I’m not interested in learning how well (i.e. badly) this rule reflects actual usage. I want to learn more about the prescriptivist rule itself, and what forms educated people have prescribed for various situations. (It’s possible different people proposed slightly different rules.)

For example, I was not aware until recently that the objective case is prescribed after “to be” in sentences of the form “They thought her to be me.” The explanation is that “me” should agree in case with the antecedent “her,” which as the object of the sentence is in the objective case.

This rule is sometimes stated along the lines of "‘to be’ should link two noun phrases of the same case" (from Mark Israel’s "It's me" vs "It is I", adapted from an article by Roger Lustig, referenced in this Stack Exchange question: Which one is correct to say: "It's me" or "It's I"?).
However, this is not sufficient as a comprehensive guide to the use of pronouns after to be, because there is not always a nominative or objective antecedent.

I found a grammar book from 1919 that seems to give slightly more guidance: Correct English, Volumes 20-21, edited by Josephine Turck Baker. In general, it follows the principle that “‘to be’ should link two noun phrases of the same case," but it also describes some exceptions.

Here's my summary of its rules, based on the examples given (I think the book's wording of the rules is unhelpful, as some of them falsely appear to contradict one another):

My interpretation of the rules in "Correct English"

Pronouns should be in the nominative case after
- am, is, was, were
- have been, has been, had been
- can be, could be
- may be, might be
- shall be, will be
Example: “I hardly think that it was he to whom Mr. Blank referred.”
I would assume the author left out some combinations of modal verb and "be" from this list merely for reasons of space, so it should be read as including should be, would be, etc.
Pronouns should be in the objective case after “to be” when it is immediately preceded by an antecedent in the objective case.

Example: “They supposed it to be me.”
Pronouns should be in the nominative case after “to be” when it is not immediately preceded by an antecedent in the objective case, and it is preceded earlier in the sentence by an antecedent in the nominative case.

Examples:
- "It was thought to be he to whom the speaker referred."
- "I should like to be he."
- "Do you think that you should like to be he?"
It seems possible that sentences such as “I am free to be I” (which seems to be the same in structure as the first sentence, aside from substituting an adjective for a participle) would also fall under this category, although unfortunately no examples of this type are given. (if so, it would contradict this Grammarphobia post.)
Pronouns should be in the nominative case after “being” when it is immediately preceded by an antecedent in the genitive case.

Example: “I had no thought of its being he.”

These rules still leave a gray area, however.

What form "should" be used where there is no antecedent of any kind?

In particular, I've thought of two cases:

What form did people prescribe after “being” when it is not preceded by an antecedent of any sort?

Being [he/him] is not easy.

What form did people prescribe after “to be” when it is not preceded by an antecedent of any sort?

To be [he/him] is not easy. It is not easy to be [he/him].

“It” is not an antecedent in the second sentence, as we can see from sentences such as “It is not easy to like her.”)

My thoughts

There is precedent for the use of the nominative after the copula without a nominative antecedent in sentences like “I had no thought of its being he.” I’m not sure why the nominative is prescribed here—it clearly would be ridiculous to use a genitive pronoun after the copula in such circumstances, but why not an objective pronoun?—but in any case, that’s clearly established in the book. So it seems a minor extension to use the nominative in sentences “Being he is not easy.” And in fact, the way the rule is phrased in Correct English suggests this: "A noun or pronoun after the verb be in the gerundial construction (being) is in the nominative case." It still sounds odd though, and there are no example sentences like this in Correct English (all of the example sentences have genitive pronouns before the gerund), so I’d like to know if it was actually prescribed by other sources.

The construction with “to be” is different. My best guess is that we would suppose an elided subject such as “[for me] to be” which would suggest the use of the objective case (“It is not easy [for him] to be him.”). But that assumption seems like it could also apply in sentences of the type *“I should like [for me] to be him,” and yet Correct English nonetheless prescribes the nominative case for the predicate noun in this sentence.

The situation in Correct English is confusing because at one point, it says "as the objective case always precedes the infinitive verb, the objective case must always follow the infinitive verb," and later on it says "The pronouns I, he, she, we, they follow to be when to be is not preceded by a noun or a pronoun." This is the apparent contradiction I was talking about earlier; you should look at it in context to see if I'm misinterpreting it. All of the example sentences where a nominative pronoun follows to be actually have nominative nouns or pronouns earlier in the sentence that can serve as antecedents, so it's not clear to me if this rule is meant to be exceptionless, or confined to certain grammatical contexts.

The kind of answer I'm interested in

As I said up top, I don't want to hear about actual usage or practical advice. I'm interested in learning what people have said is "correct" in these circumstances (preferably with examples, to make the construction totally clear). The more well-known or influential the prescriptivist, the better.

Best Answer

I cannot offer a systematic treatment of this subject, but I have found one interesting data point, English Grammar Simplified, Its Study Made Easy by James C Fernald, LHD (1916, which, alas, predates your source by three years only). To show that this is clearly a text from the prescriptive school, I quote Dr Fernald's preface:

The facts of correct English usage are, for the most part, as sure as the facts of the working of a watch or of a locomotive. We can do no better service for any student, young or old, than to tell him definitely what those facts are, and let him learn them once for all.

So there.

In the section of pronouns Rule 1 (p.199) for the nominative case makes that case required in predicate nominatives:

The Predicate Nominative; as. This is he; It is /.

Caution. — Such forms as, "It's me/' 'That's him," etc., are erroneous.

EGS prescribes the objective case for objects of infinitives and participles in Rule 9 (p. 202) for the objective case:

The Object of an Infinitive or Participle; as, My father promised to send them; I have not known of his meeting her.

However, Rule 2 (p. 200) for the nominative case allows for an exception under warning and caution:

The Nominative after an Infinitive or Participle; as, I could wish to be he; I did not think of its being /.

This use; however, is rare, and often harsh or clumsy, and therefore in general to be avoided.

Caution. - After an infinitive with a subject in the objective case, or after a participle agreeing with a noun or pronoun in the objective case, the pronoun following such infinitive or participle must be in the objective case; as, I understood it to be him.

(Everywhere emphasis is mine)

Syntax: the "object complement"

In sentences of the form "[God] [made] [me] [a man]," "God" is the subject, "made" is the verb, and "me" is the object of the verb. The phrase "a man," rather than being an object, serves the role of what is called an "object complement."

The grammatical case of the object complement

This is tricky to ascertain, since most sentences with a pronoun in this position sound very awkward and unnatural ("God made me her"?/"God made me she"?).

However, I think there are several fairly strong arguments for it being in the objective case.

For one thing, I was able to find one fairly common expression that uses this structure with an objective-case pronoun as the object complement: "what makes me me" and variations on this phrase. As far as I can tell, no one say "what makes me I," and my intuition tells me that this would be ungrammatical.

Unfortunately, this is not a foolproof argument because online examples that are similar to this often show some odd punctuation that casts doubt on the role of the pronoun here. Often there is a comma or ellipsis before the pronoun: "What made me, me", "everything that made me ... me". In contrast, a comma would be ungrammatical in "God made me, a man." This might be a sign that these phrases have different grammatical structures.

Sometimes, what appears to be the object pronoun is capitalized or put in quotation marks: "What events in my life had made me, Me?", "the things that made me 'me' ". This odd treatment almost suggests the word "me" in this expression is being treated as a noun rather than a pronoun, and in that case it would not inflect for case and would be useless as evidence for the "who"/"whom" rule. (A parallel case: we say "The Me I Want to Be", not "The I I want to Be," but prescriptive grammar still prescribes the nominative form in the phrase "who I want to be.")

But, I think there are also theoretical arguments that suggest the object complement is in the objective case (or at least, that it "should" be in prescriptivist grammar). The most straightforward is that it's a complement, and prescriptivists often value arguments like "complements should match the case of their referent." That's the whole foundation of the argument for saying "It is I" rather than "It is me."

From a more descriptive viewpoint, I have read that the "objective" case or pronouns is generally less marked in modern English, which I think means that phrases tend to default to that unless explicitly assigned to the nominative case by a rule. However, the objective case of "whom" is an exception since it basically only occurs in educated constructions that have to be explicitly taught. Some linguists argue that the rules for using "whom" have actually become distinct in the modern language from the rest of the English case system. (Some papers I found about this that I still have to finish going through: The Who/Whom Puzzle: On The Preservation Of An Archaic Feature, Whom and the English Case System).

Is it grammatical to replace the object complement with a pronoun?

I'm not sure if it's grammatical to replace this element of the sentence with a fronted relative pronoun. (I believe "who" or "whom" in this context would be a relative pronoun, although I'm not sure: it's possible it would be an interrogative). I'm currently trying to research this.

There are some examples of sentences with object complements here: http://www.englishgrammar.org/object-complement/

They elected Martin their president.

They named the boy Christopher.

I don't get great results when I try to modify them to use the pronoun "what":

*What they elected Martin was their president.
?What they named Christopher was the boy.
?What they named the boy was Christopher.

These all seem awkward to me, although Mitch and Araucaria have left comments indicating that "What they named the boy was Christopher" seems OK to them. The comments that used to exist below this question indicate that many people think "I am who(m) G-d made me" sounds ungrammatical, although I have not found any source that explains why it would be.

Araucaria also found some real-life examples of "I am/ This is who God made me" that I think are worth listing in an answer:

Connected: You and God in the Psalms, by Peter Wallace
God, Sex, and Politics: Homosexuality and Everyday Theologies, by Dawne Moon

According to typical prescriptive rules, the pronoun's role in the matrix clause shouldn't affect its form

The matrix clause (or main clause) in this example is "I am __." In general, the choice of "who" or "whom" is not affected by the pronoun's role in the matrix clause, only by its role in the embedded clause. So the prescriptivist rule about using the nominative form of a pronoun after "I am" should be irrelevant. (A similar example is discussed in this following question: Who vs. whom in complex sentences—"I gave the prize to whoever deserved it most" is correct, even though we would say "I gave the prize to him/her," because the case is determined by the embedded clause "deserved it most" and we we would say "He/She deserved it most.") The following questions are also relevant: Can a phrase be the object of a clause and how would its subject change?, "I give it to him who came first" vs. "to he who came first", Which is grammatically correct: "Let he who..." or "Let him who...".

For some speakers, there are additional complications in phrases such as "the person whom the police thought was responsible," but as Geoffrey K. Pullum explains in the linked article, the use of whom in this context is generally considered incorrect by prescriptivists.

A caveat: F.E.'s answer to the following question is also relevant, and points out that in real English usage (as opposed to the rules of prescriptivists), "fused relative" constructions like this with clashing case requirements may be avoided: "Put me in touch with whomever created it"?

Wikipedia cites an interesting passage from "The Distribution of Pronoun Case Forms in English", by Heidi Quinn, that indicates that in a similar construction in Old English (the "argument relative"), the case of the wh-pronoun was based on its role in the matrix clause.

For example, the wh-pronoun wam functions as the subject of the relative clause in (65), but the relative itself functions as the object of the matrix preposition to. Since the matrix clause always wins out over the relative-internal clause, the wh-pronoun in (65) surfaces as the objective form wam, rather than as the nominative form hwa.

(p. 331)

Unfortunately, the page with the relevant sentence was not visible in the Google Books, but I found what seems to be the same example in a PDF of Quinn's thesis:

Ðe holi gost ... hine dealeð to [wam him beoð lofue]
the holy ghost ...  3sgM.ACC gives to wh.OBJ 3sgM.OBJ is pleasing
'The holy ghost ... gives it to whomever is pleasing to him.'

(Layamon (Otho) 9081) [AlIen 1980: 208]

I'm not actually sure based on this example if this construction is really analogous to the modern English construction, but it's interesting nevertheless. You can see more discussion on the Wikipedia talk page.

Quinn also mentions the typically limited distribution of who(m) in free relatives that Peter Shor mentioned in his answer:

In Modern English free relatives, the complex wh-forms whoever, whomever, whoso(ever), and whomsoever tend to be favoured over the simplex forms who and whom (cf. Jespersen 1949[1927]:62, Baker 1995:210f), except when the relative clause involves VP ellipsis (69) or Null Complement Anaphora (70).

(p. 333)