http://www.englishforums.com/search/pro.htm?q=tag%3aNominative+tag%3aDialects+tag%3aInflectional+morphologySearch results for 'tag:Nominative tag:Dialects tag:Inflectional morphology' matching tags 'Nominative', 'Dialects', and 'Inflectional morphology'en-USCSMOD (Build: 3273.32735)http://www.englishforums.com/English/InferiorDialects/6/crkzj/Post.htm#170026Thu, 15 Dec 2005 05:16:07 GMT946f00bb-57d3-4b7b-a9a2-059b5341af52:170026randy_tam MrPedantic wrote What are we to make of the fact that adult native speakers often self prescriptivise Example Oh hello MrP MissQ was just telling Randy and me Randy and I about L1 acquisition MrP I read your question wrong oops Um I think that does not resemble self prescriptivism at all at least according to my definition thereof It is nevertheless an instance showing an L1 speaker having the tendency to correct himself of speech errors That he generates a nominative instead of accusative at the objective A position tell sbd that sbd is the Object is inexplicable with UG except with a more careful examination as to whether when the speaker was acquiring the language he was given sufficient evidence as to the fact that English has an explicit accusative 1st person form If he was not then he would treat that inflection as a covert one resembling the invisible case system in Chinese If I say I love him in Chinese i 我愛他 without regard to the grammaticality of the translation the clause can be roughly translated as i I love he in which the verb is constant Chinese verbs do not have tense morphology and the case is covert ie no inflectional morphology If he constantly generates a nominative at objective A position then he has already acquired the setting that English does not have morphological case for the singular 1st person pronoun It does not therefore amount to prescriptivism but actually the acquisition of a perhaps new variant of English case morphology