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It's an exercise for kids from a textbook. The book actually provides the answer as well:

— ... does the cat see in the tree?

— Two birds.

My question is as follows. What should we use at the place of ellipsis: 'who', 'whom' or 'what'? The textbook says the correct answer is 'what'. Why? I'd like to use 'whom', but I've already heard plenty of times it's so terribly obsolete that modern people don't use it anymore. Unfortunately I do not have a live person nearby who speaks English and thus could help me.

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  • Forget whom (everyone else does today). Use who if the expected answer is a person (or multiple people), or what if it's anything else (including birds). If you've got no idea which of those two categories applies, stick with what.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Dec 29, 2020 at 12:35
  • ...rather amusingly, it seems that all results on the first page of a Google Books search for whom do you see are actually publications intended to teach English to non-native speakers. So perhaps I should have said Forget "whom" - everyone except TEFL teachers does.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Dec 29, 2020 at 12:40
  • Thanks a lot. I am 31 years old and still didn't know we use 'who' for people only. Seems a little bit strange though... Maybe it's just my feeling. So if it exists a chance that the answer theoretically includes or may include animals, you don't use 'who'?.. E. g. Who knows...? Who sits here? Who eats shoots and leaves? (it's panda). Who has two legs? Who ate my pudding? (it may be a dog or even insects etc.) and so on. Do I have to use 'what' in all these cases instead?...
    – Alexander
    Commented Dec 30, 2020 at 9:41
  • @Alexander I think you have a good question there, but a comment is too short for an answer. Most languages have an equivalent to "who", How does it work in your language?
    – James K
    Commented Dec 30, 2020 at 10:35
  • In my language, it is 'who' for all animate creatures, including people, all the animals (not quite sure about corals though), and all the superhuman or imaginary characters (God, deities, demons, monsters and so on). We use 'what' for plants, mushrooms, inanimate objects, either natural or human-made, and all abstract things, like kindness or height etc. Bacteria and viruses are ambiguous, so you can use either pronoun.
    – Alexander
    Commented Dec 30, 2020 at 10:40

2 Answers 2

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As commented, use who if the expected answer is a person (or multiple people), or what if it's anything else (including birds). If you've got no idea whether it's a person or something else the "default" is what.

But as regards that hoary old chestnut about who / whom, I think this is an interesting usage chart....

enter image description here

What that chart clearly illustrates is that practically no-one has ever been in favour of To who am I speaking? ("fronting" the preposition, but ignoring the pedantic rule about using whom in a syntactically "objective" context).

Bear in mind that written texts (and "telephone voices") are on average much more "formal" that normal conversational English, AND that any trend visible within a source like Google Books is always likely to significantly lag behind actual usage (books take time to write and publish, they're likely to be written by older speakers, books often cite earlier texts, etc.). When we see that Who am I speaking to? has narrowly edged out To whom am I speaking?, it's reasonable to assume the usage shift is greater than suggested by the chart.

Also note that actual native speakers have always ignored those pedantic grammarians telling us we shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition - so we'd always ask What are you talking about?, rather than About what are you talking? BUT in the "semi-formal" context of answering a telephone, the combination of a "fronted" preposition to and "dated" objective case whom still occur.

I suggest that learners should simply take note that whom does still linger on in a few contexts (particularly, after "fronted" to), for some speakers. But it's not a good idea to copy them, or you'll end up asking "weird" questions like For whom do you work? instead of Who do you work for?

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    It's definitely worth being aware of the rule at least - especially when you're lucky enough to be a formal student of English who's required to know all of these things! For whom it is a requirement, I should say (except I don't talk like that)
    – cactustictacs
    Commented Dec 29, 2020 at 14:25
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    Well, I did pass comment under the question about the possibility of being a formal student of English who's required to know all of these things. Lord knows why foreigners should need to learn what some people think Anglophones should say, rather than what most of us do say. But hopefully most people here can see the clear trend in my chart, and they'll be sensible enough to attach more weight to forms that have already become dominant, and will only become more so over time. Who wants to learn "dead, dying" languages?
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Dec 29, 2020 at 16:41
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Who and whom are used for people. Birds aren't people so don't use "whom".

What is it?

a banana/a bird/a robot/an angel/

If you don't know that it is a person, use "what". Here I assume that we don't know that the thing in the tree is a person (and in fact it isn't) so we dont use who or whom.

You would only use "Who" or "Whom" if you expected the answer to be a person and you want to know the person's name. So if you can see a person sitting in a tree and a cat looking at that person, but you don't know the person's name, then you could ask

Who is the cat looking at?

That's my son, John. He's a little monkey and loves climbing trees.

It would also be correct, but dated and oddly formal to ask

At whom is the cat looking?

'Tis my only begotten child, John by name. Who in the manner of a simian, takes pleasure in the ascent of aboreal greenery.

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  • It seems to me that "fronting" the preposition at shouldn't really affect the underlying syntax (and hence the choice between who and whom, if you're prepared to consider that possibility). It's just that one of the few contexts where you still hear whom is from people adopting a "la-di-dah telephone voice" when asking To whom am I speaking? (where "normal" people today ask Who am I speaking to?).
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Dec 29, 2020 at 13:14
  • Logically it shouldn't, but there you go.
    – James K
    Commented Dec 29, 2020 at 14:50

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