The Grammar of English Grammars, page 801 by Gould Brown

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802

ilar contractions of all the compound relative pronouns; as, _whoe'er_ or _whosoe'er, whose'er_ or _whosesoe'er, whome'er_ or _whomsoe'er, whiche'er_ or _whichsoe'er, whate'er_ or _whatsoe'er_. The character and properties of these compounds are explained, perhaps sufficiently, in the observations upon the classes of pronouns. Some of them are commonly parsed as representing two cases at once; there being, in fact, an ellipsis of the noun, before or after them: as,

"Each art he prompts, each charm he can create, _Whate'er_ he gives, are given for you to hate."--_Pope's Dunciad_.

OBS. 32.--For a form of parsing the double relative what, or its compound whatever or whatsoever, it is the custom of some teachers, to suggest equivalent words, and then proceed to explain these, in lieu of the word in question. This is the method of _Russell's Gram._, p. 99; of Merchants, p. 110; of _Kirkham's_, p. 111; of _Gilbert's_, p. 92. But it should be remembered that equivalence of meaning is not sameness of grammatical construction; and, even if the construction be the same, to parse other equivalent words, is not really to parse the text that is given. A good parser, with the liberty to supply obvious ellipses, should know how to explain all good English _as it stands_; and for a teacher to pervert good English into false doctrine, must needs seem the very worst kind of ignorance. What can be more fantastical than the following etymology, or more absurd than the following directions for parsing? "What is compounded of which that. These words have been contracted and made to coalesce, a part of the orthography of both being still retained: _what--wh[ich--t]hat_; (_which-that_.) Anciently it appeared in the varying forms, _tha qua, qua tha, qu'tha, quthat, quhat, hwat_, and finally what."--_Kirkham's Gram._, p. 111. This bald pedantry of "_tha qua, qua tha_," was secretly borrowed from the grammatical speculations of William S. Cardell

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