Q.
My mother-in-law recently corrected my grammar when I said, "I knew it was he."
She said (she has a B.A. in English--I do not), "That should be him--not he."
I said, "Linking or to be verbs always take the nominative or subjective case--he is a predicate nominative."
She said, "Since the pronoun it is the direct object of knew, the pronoun which refers to or equals it takes the objective case--thus a predicate objective."
This sounds crazy to me. Who's right?
A.
You are right. "He" in your sentence is predicate nominative, not a direct object. Only transitive verbs take direct objects. Linking verbs take predicate nominatives or predicate adjectives.
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