Isn't it just missing one comma? (I suppose "whom" should be "who")

microtherion · on March 10, 2017

"whom" is wrong in 3 different ways in my opinion:

(1) It should be "who", not "whom". I find that hypercorrection immensely annoying.

(2) But actually, since Lily is a company, it should be "which", not "who".

(3) But even "which despite raising […] has filed" is wrong. It actually should just be "Lily, despite raising […], has filed" or "Lily, which raised […], has filed". "which despite raising" subordinates "has filed […]", so the whole sentence turns into a noun phrase missing its verb phrase.

theoh · on March 11, 2017

I'll accept the who/whom complaint.

As another poster has said, your point 2 is not a universally agreed rule. See http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001874.h...

Your point 3 is totally valid, I assumed you were quoting a wannabe noun phrase. I wasn't paying enough attention.

microtherion · on March 12, 2017

Point 2 to me was not about singular/plural, but about companies being animate/inanimate. It turns out that there used to be a very clear preference for "which", but by now, "who" is winning out in US usage: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=company+which%...

clebio · on March 9, 2017

Lily has (a company has filed for ...). And generally "millions of dollars". meh.

JimDabell · on March 9, 2017

Always treating organisations as singular rather than plural ("has" vs "have") is something specific to American English, and treating them as plural isn't ungrammatical in English.