EPTDaniel is sexier than he.
After a bit of research, here's some of the arguments I found:
1. The word "than" is a conjunction, not a preposition, and therefore the following noun marks the beginning of a new clause and needs to be in subject form.
2. The subject pronoun -- which in the example above is the word "he" -- represent an abbreviated clause, with the main verbs removed and only the noun remaining.
3. The use of the object pronoun, ie "him", is actually not proper grammar because of "than"'s status as a conjunction, not a preposition.
Here's my beef:
1. Only prescriptive grammar pigeonholes a word as versatile as "than" into being a conjunction. For all intents and purposes, "than" practically is a preposition, and no rulebook can change its ubiquitous usage as such. In fact, most linguistics books categorize "than" as a complementizer, not a preposition or a conjunction.
2. Since when was it ok to reduce a clause just to its noun and clam it's proper English? We don't do that with any of our other conjunctions: for example,
I am going to for a walk and Sally.
Does that shit make any sense? You have to include the predicate to clarify what the subject of the new clause is doing. Of course, with "than" usage you have a virtual repetition of the first predicate, (I am stronger than he is), so I guess it can be removed to eliminate redundancy... but isn't that sort of shortening exactly the type of abbreviation proper grammar tries to avoid? 3
3. Object pronoun as informal only makes sense if you insist on "than" as being a conjunction. Also, it flies in the face of millions of examples that demonstrate cogent language use with the object pronoun. You could argue that "just cuz everyone else does it mean doesn't mean it's right"... but that depends on your POV, and I agree with linguists who argue that language is always changing, and the onus is on the grammatical rules to keep pace with the changes, not vice versa.
This is not a case of a mispelling (complement vs compliment) that creates undesired ambiguity within a sentence. The use of the object pronoun clearly acheives the purpose of the comparative sentence and perhaps does an even better job than a subject pronoun could. The only thing that makes it wrong are a small subset of rules.
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So here's my question:
Can anyone provide me a reliable source that shows subject pronoun use with a "than"-comparative sentence as being either 1.) acceptable, 2.) proper, or 3.) more proper (lol) than object pronoun usage? I've looked everywhere but I can't seem to find it.
