ic drift of
our language to receive acceptance. The more radical solution _Who did
you see?_ is the one the language is gradually making for.

[Footnote 135: Aside from certain idiomatic usages, as when _You saw
whom?_ is equivalent to _You saw so and so and that so and so is who?_
In such sentences _whom_ is pronounced high and lingeringly to emphasize
the fact that the person just referred to by the listener is not known
or recognized.]

These three conflicts--on the score of form grouping, of rhetorical
emphasis, and of order--are supplemented by a fourth difficulty. The
emphatic _whom_, with its heavy build (half-long vowel followed by
labial consonant), should contrast with a lightly tripping syllable
immediately following. In _whom did_, however, we have an involuntary
retardation that makes the locution sound "clumsy." This clumsiness is a
phonetic verdict, quite apart from the dissatisfaction due to the
grammatical factors which we have analyzed. The same prosodic objection
does not apply to such parallel locutions as _what did_ and _when did_.
The vowels of _what_ and _when_ are shorter and their final consonants
melt easily into the following _d_, which is pronounced in the same
tongue position as _t_ and _n_. Our instinct for appropriate rhythms
makes it as difficult for us to feel content with _whom did_ as for a
poet to use words like _dreamed_ and _hummed_ in a rapid line. Neither
common feeling nor the poet's choice need be at all conscious. It may be
that not all are equally sensitive to the rhythmic flow of speech, but
it is probable that rhythm is an unconscious linguistic determinant even
with those who set little store by its artistic use. In any event the
poet's rhythms can only be a more sensitive and stylicized application
of rhythmic tendencies that are characteristic of the daily speech of
his people.

We have discovered no less than four factors which enter into our subtle
disinclination to say "Whom did you see?" The uneducated folk that says
"Who did you see?" with no twinge of conscience has a more acute flair
for the genuine drift of the language than its students. Naturally the
four restraining factors do not operate independently. Their separate
energies, if we may make bold to use a mechanical concept, are
"canalized" into a single force. This force or minute embodiment of the
general drift of the language is psychologically registered as a slight
hesitation in using the word _whom_.