This is what I'm talking about

The Hyperbole and a Half girl is me. I mean, except for all the ways in which she is not me, she's totally me.

Language Pet Peeve: Sorbet

People who spell it sherbet are wrong. People who pronounce it sor-BAY are wrong and pretentious. People who spell OR pronounce it sherbert should be slapped.

That is all.

(Non) Naming NPs

Looking back through Q. Pheevr's archives, I rediscovered his post about the naming of He Who Must Not Be Named. I think Q might not be entirely right about this.

While I'm not disputing the assertion that He Who Must Not Be Named is, in the Harry Potter books, actually a name, I don't think the invariant case is the reason.

When I check my own judgements, I find that I'm perfectly happy with, for example,

You'll have to get those numbers from she who approves the budget

even if "she who approves the budget" is a one-time innovation and not a common nickname for the accountant. On the other hand, I can't think of any context where I could use

*her who approves the budget

as a constituent NP.

In fact, it seems to me that nominative is the only acceptable case in definite descriptions that start with pronouns. Maybe this is required for the pronoun to govern¹ the rest of the NP?
Further, if the invariant case were simply a result of the description being a name then we would expect it to be possible to have a name/description with a different invariant case, for example

*Him who was thrown down a well came home today

but I don't think you can. There might be some sem/prag issues interfering here though. When you have Someone Who Cannot Be Named, usually it's because they hold some sort of power over the people who Cannot Name them, and such people tend to find themselves (or at least the NPs that refer to them) in agent positions in sentences.

So what do y'all think? Do people's judgements differ from mine?

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1. Apologies if this is not the word I'm looking for. It's been four years since I've done any syntax, so I'm counting on the linguists in my readership to just kind of know what I mean. (back)