Re: Confuse personal pronouns

Mister Micawber — Sun, 17 Oct 2004 02:55:23 GMT

Hi Happy,

This area is a very contentious one, so it is not surprising that you find different pronouncements within and between grammar books. Here is my opinion on the examples you present:

(1) 'Who did it ?' Not I.'

The pronoun stands in parallel to the subject 'who', and is a shortened form of 'I didn't do it.' As such, it is formally correct, but 'Not me' is common and acceptable in spoken English.

(2) 'It is I telling you to go out.'
'It is them I spoke to.'

In the first of these two sentences, 'I' again stands in subject apposition to 'who'-- '(who is) telling'-- while in the second sentence 'them' stands in object apposition to 'whom'-- '(whom) I spoke to' ['I spoke to them']. In informal English, however, 'It's me telling you to go out' is common and acceptable.

(3) 'Let you and me go out.'
'Let her and him do the work.'

Both of these sentences are imperative, with the understood subject 'you', so that, (ungrammatically) extended, they would read:

'(You) let you and me go out.'
'(You) let her and him do the work.'

Now it is obvious that 'you, me, her and him' are objects of the main verb. Having said that, as you will see from the additional references I quote below, 'you and I' has become so common a collocation that it is becoming acceptable in any position: 'Let's you and I have a picnic'-- in spite of the fact that 'let's' is the contraction for 'let us', which is clearly and rigidly petrified in the objective case.

(4) 'If I were a millionaire, I would buy you a car.'
'If he were a millionaire, he would buy a car.'

Both are conditional and formally take the subjunctive form 'were' in all persons; that is simply the nature of English-- one of the uses of the subjunctive mood is to express hypothetical situations. Again, however, 'if I was' is becoming increasingly acceptable in spoken English. Another sign of the slow death of the distinct subjunctive forms in the language.

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Some additional references:

(1) From the Columbia Guide to Standard American English:

"Most speakers of English tend to put nominative case pronouns at the left-hand side of the clause, in âsubjectiveâ territory before the verb, and objective case pronouns at the right-hand side of the clause, in âobjectiveâ territory after it. Apparently the pressure of this habit is so great that it overwhelms the Standard Formal pattern for the special class of verbs called linking or copulative verbs, wherein It is she is required, at least by rule, rather than Itâs her, or where This is he is needed, not This is him. The primary use of the objective case pronoun after linking verbs is in the first person: Itâs us, Itâs me. With third person, singular and plural, many Standard speakers will retain the nominative, even at lower levels of speech and in Informal uses. (And of course with second person you, the nominative and objective are indistinguishable.) But Itâs me and Itâs us are both Standard in all Conversational and most Informal uses, perhaps in part because they occur almost exclusively in speech anyway. Consider the way you answer the phone if the caller asks for you. To a stranger youâll respond (if youâre a Standard speaker), This is she [he], not This is me, or youâll dodge the issue entirely and say Speaking. If you know the caller well, though, Itâs me will serve. In Oratorical speech and Formal writing, however, Standard English demands the nominative: It is we who must shoulder the burden. It is us just wonât do in that sort of context."

(2) Observations from Greenbaum & Quirk, A Student's Grammar of the English Language:

"Case in personal pronouns involves a distinction absent from nouns, marking broadly the grammatical roles of subject and object. . . . The choice of subjective and objective forms does not depend solely upon the strict grammatical distinction between subject and object. Rather, usage shows that we are concerned more with subject 'territory' (the pre-verbal part of a clause) in contrast to object 'territory' (the post-verbal part of the clause). In consequence of the latter consideration, it is usual in informal style to find objective forms selected in such instances as the following:

His sister is taller than him.
It wasn't me.

Many people are uncomfortable about such forms, however, especially in writing, though the subject variants are almost equally objectionable in seeming unnatural. Where an operator can be added, of course, the problem of choice satisfactorily disappears:

His sister is taller than he is.

Note: In contrast with 'except', which is always treated as a preposition and therefore followed by the objective case ('Nobody except her objected.'), there is vacillation over prepositional 'but', many people preferring the subjective form if it is in subject 'territory'. Thus:

Nobody but she objected.

Even in object territory, 'but' can be followed by either form, as with 'as' and 'than':

Nobody objected but she/her.

The frequency of the coordination 'you and I' seems to have resulted in a tendency to make it case-invariant, though such examples as the following are felt to be uneasily hypercorrect:

Let's you and I go together then."

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Re: Confuse personal pronouns