Search results for 'tag:Nominative tag:Contractions' matching tags 'Nominative' and 'Contractions'

Re: Pronoun Case. Please Help.

Eddie88 — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 02:47:37 GMT

Very informative and clear once again, thanks!

I never realised there were rules around the contraction isn't! It is great to now know.

One final question (I hope I am not over using your knowledge, haha) is in regards to this sentence.

Unfortunately, it is to do with the whom/who case again!

'We have people whom/who can testify this fact if necessary'

Thanks to you, I am aware of four rules to decide whether it is the objective or nominative pronoun:

1) If it is the object of a preposition- there is no preposition in this sentence; so I ignore this rule

2) If it follows the be verb- there is no be verb before the pronoun; so I ignore this rule

3) If it is the subject or object of the clause it is in (it is generally a relative clause, correct?)- This is where I have trouble. I find it hard to establish what clause it is apart of. Is it always a part of the relative clause?

This is what I thought:

In this sentence the independent clause is we have people and the dependent/relative clause is who/whom can testify this fact (what would if necessary be?).

So, because the pronoun is the subject of the relative clause, it is who and testify would be the object of the clause, correct?

However, my other thought was that we have people is not an independent clause as it doesn't have a complete thought, correct?

In this case, we have people whom/who can testify this is the independent clause...

Please help!

Re: Pronoun Case. Please Help.

AlpheccaStars — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:39:06 GMT

Eddie88
I was wondering when you said, 'right again! the pronoun and it's object must make up...'

In America (assuming this is where you are based) do they use apostrophes to show possession of these pronouns? (it's object). Where I am from, we omit the apostrophe to avoid the confusion with the contraction, 'it is.'

The it's is not correct, even in American English.

It's = = it is.

its = = possessive case of it.

Eddie88
What I am saying is that 'that must be he on the plane' isn't he the subject of the sentence?

He is in the predicate nominative case. However, in casual speech following "must be" we break the grammatical rule and use the objective case. .

Re: Pronoun Case. Please Help.

Eddie88 — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:15:03 GMT

Great, thanks a lot!

I was wondering when you said, 'right again! the pronoun and it's object must make up...'

In America (assuming this is where you are based) do they use apostrophes to show possession of these pronouns? (it's object). Where I am from, we omit the apostrophe to avoid the confusion with the contraction, 'it is.'

Secondly, I don't quite understand what you mean to my answer to the following question above: Now, I understand this; however, could the justification be equally sound if I were to say that it is the nominative (subjective) case because the pronoun is the subject of the sentence, so it should be HE?

What I am saying is that 'that must be he on the plane' isn't he the subject of the sentence? In this case it means that it is correct to have he not him... But now that I re-ask the question, I am beginning to realise that he/him would not be the subject of the sentence...'that' would be the subject...correct? And he/him is the object of the sentence. But in this case it is the nominative case because the pronoun follows the 'be verb'. Am I on track here?

Everything else was clear and superb, thanks!!

Study guide.

Matrix4583 — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 02:03:02 GMT

Hey, i'm new here. My name is Tim and I got this forum from a friend of mine. He told me that this might help me with the problem i got. I have a brother that is 16 years old and i'm 23( in the US Army). He needs help with his english. The teacher gave him the study guide, but no answer on it. So i ask him to give the study guide to me and i'll help him with it. Well, since i'm busy soo much on school and my job, it's impossible for me to do this. I was wondering if you have some time and help me with this problem. I really appreciate it. Here's the problem.

Language Art:

A. apostrophe
B. Synonym
C. noun or pronoun
D. quotations mark
E. Adjective
F. verb or verb phrase
G. abbreviation
H. antonyms
I. root word.
J. proper nouns
K. Verb
L. action and linking
M. gerund
N. adverb
O. gender
P. subject
Q. Nomniative, object and possessive
R. Predicate nominative
S. Present, past and future
T. direct object.
U. prepositions
V. appositive
W. Object of a preposition

1.____ The subject of a sentence may be what part of speech?
2.____ States what the subject does, is or has in a sentence.
3.____ Sometimes called the simple predicate
4.____ The main part of a without any affixes.
5.____ Two kinds of a Verb.
6.____ What moddifies noun or pronoun?
7.____ What follow a linking verb or action verb?
8.____ The simple tense of verb.
9.____ Follow a preposition.
10.____ Tells more about another noun.
11.____ Answer "what?" or "whom?"
12.____ who or what the sentences about.
13.____ The three cases of personal pronoun.
14.____ personal pronoun have number, person and what?
15.____ Usually modifies a verb, but can sometimes modify an adjective.
16.____ show relationship between it's object and some other word in a sentence.
17.____ A participle that end in "ing" and functions as a noun.
18.____ needed to form possessive nouns and contractions.
19.____ Capitalized because they are particular person, places, and things.
20.____ A short way of writing a word consisting of some of the letters in the word followed by a period.
21.____ Used to show where the exact word of a speaker begin and end.
22.____ Opposite meaning.
23.____ A word that is similar to another in meaning.

That's it. Hoooha.

Study guide.

Matrix4583 — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 22:08:35 GMT

Weaknesses in the CGEL? (Cambridge Grammar of the English Language)

MrPedantic — Thu, 10 Feb 2005 23:35:59 GMT

People sometimes refer to the CGEL on this site. Conveniently, some
sample chapters from this publication are now online at CGEL sample chapters

The preliminary chapter includes the odd lapse of logic. This is one of the first.
Apologies for the fairly lengthy quotation:

Another kind of illegitimate argument is based on analogy between
one area of grammar and another. Consider yet another construction where
there is variation between nominative and accusative forms of pronouns:

[3] a. They invited me to lunch.
[3] b.% They invited my partner and I to lunch.

The â%â symbol is again used to mark the B example as typically used by some
speakers of Standard English but not others, though this time it is not a matter of
regional variation. The status of the construction in B differs from that of
Itâs me, which is undisputedly normal in informal use, and from that
of !Me and Kim saw her leave, which is unquestionably non-standard.

What is different is that examples like B are regularly used by a significant
proportion of speakers of Standard English, and not generally thought by
ordinary speakers to be non-standard; they pass unnoticed in broadcast
speech all the time.

Prescriptivists, however, condemn the use illustrated by 3b, insisting
that the âcorrectâ form is They invited my partner and me to lunch.

And here again they seek to justify their claim that 3b is ungrammatical
by an implicit analogy, this time with other situations found in English, such
as the example seen in A. In A the pronoun functions by itself as direct
object of the verb and invariably appears in accusative case. What is
different in B is that the direct object of the verb has the form of a
coordination, not a single pronoun. Prescriptivists commonly take it for
granted that this difference is irrelevant to case assignment. They argue
that because we have an accusative in A we should also have an
accusative in B, so the nominative I is ungrammatical.

But why should we simply assume that the grammatical rules for case
assignment cannot differentiate between a coordinated and a non-coordinated
pronoun? As it happens, there is another place in English grammar where
the rules are sensitive to this distinction â for virtually all speakers, not
just some of them:

4 a. I donât know if youâre eligible.
4 b. I donât know if she and youâre eligible.

The sequence you are can be reduced to youâre in A, where
you is subject, but not in B, where the subject has the form of a
coordination of pronouns.

This shows us not only that a rule of English could apply differently to
pronouns and coordinated pronouns, but that one rule actually does. If that
is so, then a rule could likewise distinguish between 3a and 3b. The
argument from analogy is illegitimate. Whether 3b is treated as correct
Standard English or not (a matter that we take up in Ch. 5, Â§16.2.2), it
cannot be successfully argued to be incorrect simply by virtue of the
analogy with 3a.

This passage appears to contain two weakness. First, it uses analogy to
argue against analogy. Second, it mistakes the nature of the 'rule' in
4a and 4b.

Analogy
According to the passage above, prescriptivists say:

1. 'Apply {direct object pronoun rule 3a} to {co-ordinated direct object pronoun pair 3b}'.

The CGEL says in reply that this 'illegitimate argument is based on analogy
between one area of grammar and another'; that in fact,

2. 'We don't apply {subject pronoun rule 4a} to {co-ordinated subject pronoun pair 4b};

therefore

3. We needn't apply {direct object pronoun rule 3a} to {co-ordinated direct object pronoun pair 3b}'.

Which is to argue against the use of analogy by using an analogy.

Even more strangely, the CGEL's analogy is between uses of subject and
object pronouns; whereas the so-called prescriptivists' analogy is at least
between uses of object pronouns in both cases.

Mistaking the nature of the rule in 4a
The CGEL states that the change in form in 4b is a question of case assignment.

In fact, it's a question of contraction. In 4a, contraction is used; whereas 4b
should be corrected to 'I don't know if she and you are eligible'.

(This is independently explicable: the 'you' requires separate stress not because
of case, but because it's one of a pair. Moreover, native speakers would indeed
often slightly contract the 'are':

4. c. I don't know if she and you'er eligible.)

MrP

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.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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."

Re: When were together

guyd — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 02:45:02 GMT

Jessie:

I have made corrections to your grammar. Compare my revision to your original.
________________________________________________________________

When we're together the world stands still,
Our meeting must have God's will.
When we're together the birds always sing,
You're holding me under an angel's wing.
When we're together the flowers always bloom,
My heart without you is like doom.
When we're together the sky is not grey,
You've made my life a glorious day.
When we're together and your lips touch mine, The feeling is too divine.
When we're together I can't help but touch your face,
Because I love you so much.
When we're together on the beach at night,
I am so glad things were just right.
When we're together and you take my hand,
I am just happy that you understand.
When we're together I know I can trust,
That this is more than just lust.
____________________________________________________________

You use the word "were" throughout your poem. "Were" is a verb. The word you want to use is "we're," which is a contraction for "we are."

In line one, "world" is singular. For the verb to be in agreement, you should use "stands" instead of "stand." In the second line, you want to use the possessive case "Our" instead the objective case "us." Generally a gerund ("meeting" is a gerund) requires the possessive case.

In line nine, use the possessive "your" instead of the nominative "you."

I would leave out the word "to" in line ten.

Your poem is very touching. I can feel the emotion you put in it. You thought is clear and I can tell that this poem has meaning to you. That meaning is conveyed to me.

Thanks.