# EN: You are kicking a boy as good as him/he



## isausa81

Hello,

This sentence has a grammatical error (*him* should be he), but I don't understand why?

"You are kicking a boy as good as him out of the house for a tattoo."

Can anyone help me to understand, please?

Thks.


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## Meille

There is no error...


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## isausa81

That's what I think but I found this in a reading comprehension, in the answer part, so I try to understand in which case the pronoun HE should be better than HIM...


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## misterk

I agree with Meille.
You would say, for example, "No-one wants it as much as he" because that means "as much as he does."
Or: "No-one sings as well as he" because that means "as well as he sings."
But I don't believe the same logic applies in your sentence.


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## Colmartranslation

It's a pronoun "aussi bien que LUI".

i.e. it's not a subject, which would be the case for "he"/ "he does" (subject verb)


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## misterk

I think Colmartranslation means that it is an object, rather than a subject.
_I've never met anyone as clever as John._
_I've never met anyone as clever as him. (not "he")_
_You wouldn't punish a boy as nice as him (not "he")._


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## Colmartranslation

I was referring to your excellent example "as well as he sings".


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## Meille

I couldn't see anything wrong with the sentence before reading all these comments but  now it occurs to me that it could be:

 "You are kicking a boy as good as him out of the house for a tattoo."

... a boy as good as _he is_...


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## isausa81

Thks Meille, I got it clear now ;+)


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## Keith Bradford

Let's forget the theory. In practice not one English speaker in ten thousand would say "You are kicking a boy as good as he out of the house for a tattoo."

This pronoun is treated as if it were the object of a preposition, not the subject of a verb.  _*Him*_ is correct.


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## jann

I'm not comfortable going so far as Keith and marking "he" wrong.

The words "as" and "than" in comparative structures ("as good as," "better/worse than") may be analyzed as either conjunctions or prepositions.  Conjunctions are followed by subject pronouns and the verb may omitted by ellipsis: "as good as he [is]."  Prepositions are followed by object pronouns, no verb:  "as good as him."

Some people feel that it's better to avoid using 3rd person object pronouns in comparisons... but others feel that replacing them with subject pronouns sounds snobby, especially if you omit the verb.  So you can't make everyone happy.

Bottom line:  both "he" and "him" are correct here, depending on who you ask.

There are quite a number of threads on the English Only forum about this topic, for example:
 I/me, he/him: Than me or than I?; than him or than he?; etc, etc
 I did the same as {he/him}
than He/him

Here's what Merriam-Webster says about pronouns after comparatives (mentioned in the entry about prepositional usage of "than"). 





> Some 200 years of  elaborate reasoning have led to these present-day inconsistent  conclusions: [...]  _than_ followed by a third-person objective pronoun (_her, him, them_) is usually frowned upon.  Our evidence shows that _than_ is used as a conjunction more commonly than as a preposition, [...] and that _me_ is more common after the preposition than the third-person objective pronouns. In short, you can use _than_ either as a conjunction or as a preposition.


Merriam-Webster provides no comparable usage discussion for "as," and the comparative  example sentences are in the section for using "as" as a conjunction.


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## Keith Bradford

I've just run through the first 150 examples of "as good as he..." in Google. Every one is followed almost immediately by a verb, none by a full stop or other punctuation.  The ones that aren't followed by a verb, it's a verb phrase (e.g. "as he ever did").


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## Wil_Estel

This is once again, a grammar-dictator kind of structure.

It is indeed like Meille has pointed out: "as good as he _(is)_". Most people will not say this, but grammatically speaking, if English had a body like l'Acedémie française, this is the grammatically correct form. I would not go in so far as marking it wrong. 

What native speakers say are not always grammatically correct. You get sentences like "I'm good" when it should have been "I'm well", or "I should have drove to school today" when it should have been "driven". And Google only shows what people have been using, not necessarily what is right or wrong.


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## Keith Bradford

Wil_Estel said:


> ... grammatically speaking, if English had a body like l'Acedémie française, this is the grammatically correct form. I would not go in so far as marking it wrong.
> 
> ...


 
You're very brave; English doesn't have an Académie, so who is to say that it's the "grammatically correct" form?  The standard by which grammatical correctness is judged in English is the majority vote of educated users.

Now, I'm not going to say that all users of the internet are educated (God knows!) and nor am I going to mark "as good as he" wrong.  I merely state that it is very very rare to find it followed by "out of" (or any other preposition for that matter).  That is a statistical fact - do the research.


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## Wil_Estel

I beg your pardon. But you did mark it wrong.

As to why I dare say that it is the grammatically correct form, I used a simple logic. Please take a look at the following sentence.

She is taller than her brother (is)
-> She is taller than he (is)

Most people do not say this (including me), but they say --> She is taller than him. 

So, why would "she is taller than he" be more acceptable amongst grammarians? Well, because it is more logical; it compares two things using a parallel structure (subject compared to another subject), especially when they are on equal grounds. 

Whilst, I have never said in this real life, and probably never will, this is the form that I would put in my essays.

So the same logic applies in the original sentence. I know that "a boy" is an object in the sentence, but if we pull that particular part out and rewrite it in a sentence we get "A boy is a good as he is". 

So if this is the original comparison, then we should get a sentence like "You are kicking a boy as good as he (is) out of the house for a tattoo," where "is" is optional.


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## Maître Capello

There is indeed some logic in both approaches and none can be deemed incorrect.

According to the The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (see TFD s.v. _than_):


> However, _than_ is quite commonly treated as a preposition when  followed by an isolated noun phrase, and as such occurs with a pronoun  in the objective case: _John is taller than me._ Though this usage  is still widely regarded as incorrect, it is predominant in speech and  has reputable literary precedent, appearing in the writing of such  respected authors as Shakespeare, Johnson, Swift, Scott, and Faulkner.  It is also consistent with the fact that _than_ is clearly treated as a preposition in the _than whom_ construction, as in _a poet than whom (not than who) no one has a dearer place in the hearts of his countrymen._ Still, the writer who risks a sentence like _Mary is taller than him_  in formal writing must be prepared to defend the usage against  objections of critics who are unlikely to be dissuaded from the  conviction that the usage is incorrect. · Comparatives using _as . . . as_ can be analyzed as parallel to those using _than._ Traditional grammarians insist that _I am not as tall as he_  is the only correct form; in formal writing, one should adhere to this  rule. However, one can cite both literary precedent and syntactic  arguments in favor of analyzing the second _as_ as a preposition (which would allow constructions such as _I am not as tall as him)._


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## Keith Bradford

Thank you, Maître.

In brief, good English is not a logical language.  (Which one is?)


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