http://www.englishforums.com/search/pro.htm?q=tag%3aNominative+tag%3aEnglish+grammar+tag%3aContractionsSearch results for 'tag:Nominative tag:English grammar tag:Contractions' matching tags 'Nominative', 'English grammar', and 'Contractions'en-USCSMOD (Build: 3273.32735)http://www.englishforums.com/English/WeaknessesCgelCambridgeGrammar-EnglishLanguage/xpmc/post.htmThu, 10 Feb 2005 23:35:59 GMT946f00bb-57d3-4b7b-a9a2-059b5341af52:73323mrpedanticPeople 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 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 It s 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 correct 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 for virtually all speakers not just some of them 4 a I don t know if you re eligible 4 b I don t know if she and you re eligible The sequence you are can be reduced to you re 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 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