Читать книгу Bad Advice - John E. McIntyre - Страница 12

That cannot be used to refer to human beings, only to animals or inanimate objects.

The Associated Press Stylebook distinction that who refers to people and named animals, that to inanimate objects and unnamed animals is generally the case—but not universally so.

Garner’s Modern American Usage says bluntly, “It’s a silly fetish to say that who is the only relative pronoun that can refer to humans.”

There are two major contexts in which that is an appropriate pronoun to refer to human beings.

The first is in references to groups of people, as in “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light” (Isaiah 9:2 and Handel’s Messiah). The second is in reference to a person whose identity is not known, as in “The girl that I marry will have to be / As soft and pink as a nursery” (Irving Berlin, Annie Get Your Gun).

You want to argue that that can never refer to human beings, you have the Authorized Version and Irving Berlin to contend with, and you’re going to lose.