Search results for 'tag:Nominative tag:English grammar' matching tags 'Nominative' and 'English grammar'

Re: Absolute Nominative Participle Construction

Thomas Tompion — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:35:09 GMT

I think the point is that an 'absolute' construction modifies the whole sentence, whereas a participle construction modifies the subject. Thus:

Dinner being ready, we all went downstairs - Absolute construction (we didn't necessarily prepare the dinner)

Having prepared dinner, we all went downstairs - Participle construction (we prepared the dinner)

A common problem is to forget that the participle construction modifies the subject, as in
Not having read the book myself, it was difficult for me to comment.
Many people make this mistake - I found the sentence in a well-known English grammar book.

It didn't read the book, and could not have read the book myself.

One way out of the error is to say Not having read the book myself, I found it difficult to comment.

Re: Absolute Nominative Participle Construction

Anonymous — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 09:38:13 GMT

An example would be, 'The regulation included monthly and hourly rates, daily rates having been omitted.' The five-word phrase at the end of this sentence comprises a participle with its own subject or nominative. I forget why it is called 'absolute'. The only book I know that mentions the construction is R.W. Zandvoort's A Handbook of English Grammar. It is an old book, perhaps not widely used in the English-speaking world (Zandvoort was a Dutchman), but I have seen reference to it in mainland Chinese writings about English. A good city library should have the book. I often use the construction translating, and teaching translation, from Chinese to English. The nature of Chinese is such that I find the construction indispensible. I used it without thinking until, one day, one of my Chinese students questioned its validity. That set me thinking. I justified it as an adverbial phrase qualifying the verb in the preceding clause ('included' in the example above). None of the modern grammars I consulted mentioned it, so I was relieved when I encountered Zandvoort's authoritative discussion. Today, another of my Chinese students told me that she was taught the construction when studying for the English Toeffl exam, and advised to use it, if she could, because its use would indicate an intimate knowledge of English in the writer.

Help with nominative-accusative case.

M. Caliban — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 13:59:05 GMT

Although I'm a native English speaker, I've often struggled to understand English grammar, especially its morphosyntatical elements. I've done some reading on nominative-accusative as well as ergative-absolutive cases and I just don't get it.

Can someone who's better at linguistics explain this to me?

I understand that a sentence has a Subject, a Verb, and an Object. (John sees fish) I understand that a verb can be transitive, in that it demands both subject and object, or intransitive, in that it won't accept an object.

For example, 'to see' is transitive in that John (the subject) has to see something (the direct object), he can't 'just see.' On the other hand, 'to sleep' is intransitive in that John can 'just sleep' but he can't sleep a direct object.

1a: John sees fish.

1b: John sees.

2a: John sleeps fish

2b: John sleeps.

Therefore, 1a and 2b are right. 2a is never right and 1b is only right if you want to interpret it as actually saying, "John does see."

As I understand it, nominative-accusative case is when a language 'marks' the direct object of a transitive verb. So, if my mark was '-do' then I could say:

1. John sees fish.

2. John fish-do sees.

3. Fish-do sees John.

4. Sees fish-do John.

And all of them would mean the same thing. Word order doesn't matter now as no matter where I scatter the word fish the -do tells me what its function in the sentence is.

My problem (took me long enough, didn't it?) is that English is described as having a vestigial normative-accusative case in its use of pronouns and passive voice but I don't see it. Can someone explain how normative-accusative applies to the English language?

The Seven Deadly Sins of Grammar

Drewauerbach — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 17:45:42 GMT

I know of at least seven grammatical errors that I think are both widespread but easily fixable issues in both colloquial and written usage. I'd like to share these errors, and their solutions, with you today.

1) Incorrectly constructed parrallel structure (emphasis on the infinitive).
     One of the more unusual aspects of English grammar is that we express infinitives using two words, to + conjugated verb. Commonly, the "to" part of the infinitive is ignored in parallel structure. Here are a couple example sentences incorporating this easily fixable grammatical error:
      A. WRONG: I like to run and play.   RIGHT: I like to run and to play.
      B. WRONG: She said she's going to call us soon, ask us what time the movie is, and meet us there.
          RIGHT: She said she's going to call us soon, to ask us what time the movie is, and to meet us there.

2) Split infinitive
    This error is both widespread and easy to fix. Basically, just avoid inserting words between the "to" and the conjugated verb when expressing an infinitive. Here is an example:
    WRONG: I want to quickly run.

3) Misuse of the limiting adjectival modifiers, "only" and "just"
    The error is the misplacement of only before a verb rather than after it. Doing so changes the meaning of the sentence entirely, often confusing the sharp reader. The words "only" and "just" are similar in meaning, and you can use them interchangeably. Consider the following example sentence:
     A. WRONG: I only want to go to the movies. RIGHT: I want only to go to the movies.
     In the WRONG sentence, the speaker states that (s)he "only wants to go to the movies." This sentence DOES imply that (s)he wants to do NOTHING ELSE, such as buy a bucket of popcorn, buy a ticket, sit down to watch the show, or even breathe. The usage of only before the verb is, in this sense, a disaster because now the speaker is speaking suicidally! Now, because the error is so widespread, it is often easy to say the WRONG sentence and convey the RIGHT meaning. But, the RIGHT sentence also conveys the RIGHT meaning, not only to those ignorant of this fixable error, but to those who understand it. So, pick the RIGHT sentence!
     Special Notes: This error just drives me nuts, becasue it is widespread yet fixable.

4) Pronounce antecedent agreement error: IT!
    I will explain the error through an example:
    WRONG: It is nice. RIGHT: Ice is nice.
    Look at the WRONG sentence and ask yourself, back to what does "It" refer? Nothing, the reader or listener becomes confused.

    Special Notes: This error perhaps is the most widespread of the four. It is also the most difficult to fix because usually people have this error ingrained by habit and don't even realize the need to fix it.

5) Misuse of this, that, these, those, one
    Basically, the misusage of these words occurs when a person omits a noun that should follow immediately after these indicator adjectives. Here are a couple examples:
    A. WRONG: I don't like this. RIGHT: I don't like this (feeling, basketball, etc.).
    In the WRONG sentence, "this" leaves a reader confused. In speech, the listener may be confused if you don't obviously identify what "this" is using body language.
    B. WRONG: What is this? RIGHT: What is this (sensation, feeling, crap, etc.)
    Here, you leave the reader or listener hanging by omitting identifying what you don't know.

    Special Notes: CAREFUL! You would be entirely correct in speech to say, "What is this?" if, in some obvious way, you directed the listener's attention to exactly what you wanted "this" to identify using body language.   One such way, provided that the unknown is a thing (as opposed to a sensation, feeling, etc.), would simply be to point at the object in question.

6) End of the sentence prepositions
    This error occurs when you place a preposition at the end of a sentence. The error is widespread, especially in speech. Here are a couple example sentences:
    A. WRONG: Who are you going with? RIGHT: With whom are you going?
    (If you're sharp, then you noticed that I changed who to whom. I did so because in the WRONG sentence, we use the word that indicates the unknown person in the nominative case. In the correct sentence, we use this word in the objective case.
    B. RIGHT: Shut up.
    I wrote this example to indicate that "up" here is not a preposition, but an adjective. Make sure that you pay attention!
    Special Notes: This error is hard to fix during speech but not in written work (proofread!). With practice, you should be able to fix it in both speech and writing. In speech, the error is often acceptable. Some people actually think the error is unecessarily identified. As one man president once said (I neither remember his name nor his exact sentence), "This is the sort of arrant pedantry up with which I shall not put."

7) Passive voice
    Passive voice means of, relating to, or being a verb form or voice used to indicate that the grammatical subject is the object of the action or the effect of the verb. Strictly speaking, this error is not grammatical in nature but rather is stylisitc. Here are examples:
    A. WRONG: The rag was washed by Joe. RIGHT: Joe washed the rag.
    By making the subject of the sentence an object on which an action was performed, the WRONG sentence is passive voice. You can avoid passive voice, so do so.
    B. WRONG: The reader is confused by the writer. RIGHT: The reader is confused.
    This example demonstrates another way of rewording a passive sentence. In this manner, you avoid passive voice by omitting the doer of the action. This way of rewording a sentence is useful to create mystery in writing, but for the most part, and especially in speech, you should indicate what performs the action and do so by rewording the sentence into active voice (see example A).

Re: eragative or middle.

paco2004 — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 02:14:14 GMT

Hello Anon

Are you testing our knowledge about linguistic terms?

"Ergative" is originally the term used to refer to the case of the subject in the transitive sentences of ergative-absolutive languages like Georgian and Basque. In those languages, the nouns are marked by an "ergative-case marker" when they come to the position of subject in a transitive sentence and otherwise the nouns are marked by an "absolute-case marker". You can see this argument more clearly by comparing two sentences:
         1. The woman(erg) loved the man(abs).
         2. The man(abs) arrived.
So roughly speaking, "ergative verbs" in ergative-absolutive languages is synonymous to "transitive verbs" in nominative-accusative languages such as English. However, some English linguists use the term "ergative verbs" to refer to special verbs that can be used both in transitive and intransitive ways without significant difference in the meaning. Take "break" as the example:
         3. Someone broke the china.
         4. The china broke.
If English were an ergative-absolutative language, the subject in the sentence #3 should take the ergative case. This might be the reason theses amphoteric verbs were named as "ergative verbs". So, more precisely speaking, when it is used as an English grammar term, "ergative verbs" refers to some intransitive verbs that can be used as a transitive verb. "Unaccusative verbs" is another term used to refer to the same things. This term was created on the ground that the subjects of such intransitive verbs are in the accusative case when they are in the original transitive sentences.

It is said English has about 600 ergative verbs. Examples are : alter, balance, beat, begin, bend, bleed, boil, burn, burst, change, circulate, close, commence, dash, decrease, increase, diminish, drop, dry, embark, end, explode, fade, fill, form, freeze, gather, grow, harden, improve, increase, issue, melt, open, pass, roll, separate, shake, shine, shiver, shoot, slip, spread, start, stir, stop, split, spread, start, tear, thaw, thicken, turn, twist, upset, etc.. In contrast to these ergative verbs, verbs like "arrive", "jump", and "dance" are obligatorily intransitive and therefore the subjects of these verbs couldn't take an ergative case if English were an ergative-absolutive language. So these genuine intransitive verbs are called "unergative verbs".

"Middle verbs" is another term for a special class of verbs that can be used both transitively and intransitively. Middle verbs and ergative verbs somewhat overlap with each other, but their concepts are different. Let's take your three sentences.
          3. Someone broke the china.
          4. The china broke.
          5. China breaks easily.
"Break" in the sentence #4 is an ergative verb. It is used in a sentence describing an event that a certain china broke. On the other hand, "breaks" in the sentence #5 is a middle verb. It is used in a sentence describing a quality or property of china, that is, the sentence #5 says that china has a quality of being easily broken.

Many amphoteric verbs can be both an ergative verb and a middle verb. But some amphoteric verbs can be used only a middle verb. Take "sell" as an example.
          6. The book sells well.
          7. They sold the book in the university bookstore.
          8. The book was sold in the university bookstore.
          9. (*) The book sold in the university bookstore.
"Sell" in the sentence #6 is a middle verb and it describes the quality of "the book". The sentence #7 describes an event and the sentence #8 is a passive version of the sentence #7. We cannot make a sentence like the sentence #9 to mean the same as the sentence #8. The ergative verbs are commonly used to describe a change of the state of the subject, while the middle verbs are commonly used to describe the quality or the state of the subject.

paco

the original text

Teo — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 05:29:52 GMT

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. b. %They invited my partner and I to lunch.

The <%> symbol is again used to mark the [3b] example as typically used by some speakers of Standard English but not by others, though this time it is not a matter of regional variation. The staus of the construction in [3b] differs from that of It's me, which is undisputably 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 [3b] 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.

Prescriptists, however, condemn the use illustrated by [3b], insisting that the 'correct' form is They invited my partner andme to lunch. And here again they seek to justify the claim that [3b] is ungrammatical by an implicit analogy, this time with other situations found in English, such as the example seen in [3a]. In [3a] the pronoun functions by itself as direct object of the verb and invariably appears in accusative case. What is different in [3b] is that the direct object of the verb has the form of a coordination, not a single pronoun. Prescriptists commonly take it for granted that this difference is irrelevant to case assignment. They argue that because we have an accusative in [3a] we should also have an accusative in [3b], so the nominative I is ungrammatical.

But why should we simply assume that the grammatical rules for case assignment cannot differentiate between a coordianated 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 are eligible. b. *I don't know if she and you're eligible.

The sequence you are can be reduced to you're in [4a], where you is subject, but not in [4b], 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....

For further information, please read section 2.2 Disagreement between descriptist and prescriptist work in Chapter 1 of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, published by Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Re: Prescriptive Grammarians - Who Are They?

LanguageLover — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 22:51:27 GMT

I do not remember any names. But this is what I remember from my grammar course. Writing a grammar for a language started when scholars wanted to record the rules of Latin before it was going to have no speakers (17th century I guess, you guys should know better than me)(there were very few grammars written before that time). The problem began when the scholars of other languages, including English, began to impose the Latin rules on their own language. The following quotation is from The Linguistics Encyclopedia edited by Kirsten Malmkjer, Routledge.(Sorry guys, I have also studied linguistics, so I can't provide you with any anti-linguistics reference!)
Grammars of English became common in the 18th century. The most famous of these are Bishop Robert Lowth's A Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762), and Linda Murray's English Grammar (1795). These early English grammars were written by scholars steeped in the Latin tradition, who felt that a grammar should provide a set of rules for correct language use, where "correct" meant according to the rules of the grammar of Latin. Such grammars are known as prespective or normative, and are often compared unfavourably with the descriptive grammars produced by linguists, whose main concern is with how a language is used, rather than with how some people think it ought to be used.
One of the examples of prespective grammars that is widely quoted among linguistics is "It's me" that according to perspective grammarians ought to be "It's I", since in Latin if the subject is nominative, the complement also has to be in nominative case.
If you are looking for more examples, MrP, you can refer to Grammar by Palmer, F.R. (1971).
However, the term "perspective grammar" is still used for the ones with strict rules, for example, in an unreal situation we have to use the form "were" for the first person singular, and thus: I wish I were you.
From a descriptive grammar point of view, "I wish I was you" also can be used, since it is in use by the speakers of English. (Though as you know, the usage is a bit different.)
I've learned something from my own experience (with my husband actually!) that it's better to leave linguistic discussions among linguistics(I mean who academically studied linguistics). My husband never accepts something when I'm describing it based on linguistics. It doesn't mean that my husband or you are not familiar with language or linguistics. Just as you know, language seems so trivial that we do not challenge the grammar that we study at school,... And one of the first thing that we learn when we began to study linguistics academically is that the task of linguist is to describe a language spoken at the present time, the way people use it now.
I think this forum is not a place to have that kind of discussion Rachhand and Katsudan(I do not remember his name correctly, any way) have, unless they are on the linguistic thread. I think Paco's reply was enough. But ...
Sorry guys, I know that I'm not good at transfering the things that I know, but hope that it helps.

Re: The use of hope

paco2004 — Tue, 19 Apr 2005 23:23:31 GMT

??I want that you clean up your room this instant!

It would not surprise me to learn that it was possible in some NAmE Englishes.

Some Romance language speaking immigrants may speak it.

Quote from Everything2 : The Subjunctive Mood of English

After verbs which formerly used the subjunctive mood, we often find the 'logically odd' but economical construction of the accusative pronoun (or just regular noun) plus the infinitive. Thus we are saved from saying, "I want that he be good today," instead we use, "I want him to be good today." Alternatively, in the negative sentences like, "I don't want him seeing that girl anymore!" the present participle is sometimes found. When you look at the latter sentence from a logical point of view, which is often futile in English grammar altogether, the subject doesn't really want the "object" (him), but rather wishes that the subject of the subjunctive clause exhibit the characteristic of being good. Perhaps on the model of the predicate nominative one could label this phenomenon the "subject accusative". In a modern language that retains the subjunctive such as French we find "Je veux qu'il soit sage," (I want that he be good/behave), whereas the phrase, "Je le veux Ãªtre sage," (I want him to be good/behave) is completely absurd. This illustrates the difference between French and English, which has all but lost its subjunctive form yet still feels a subconscious need to convey the emotion in "I want him to be good," instead of losing it completely in the non-subjunctival construction, "I want (that) he's good."

paco

Re: JTTs point on using I or me.

rhetor — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 22:15:02 GMT

http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1994_01_24_thenewrepublic.html

Probably no "grammatical error" has received as much scorn as "misuse" of pronoun case inside conjunctions (phrases with two parts joined by [and] or [or]). What teenager has not been corrected for saying [Me and Jennifer are going to the mall]? The standard story is that the object pronoun [me] does not belong in subject position -- no one would say [Me is going to the mall] -- so it should be [Jennifer and I]. People tend to misremember the advice as "When in doubt, say 'so-and-so and I', not 'so-and-so and me'," so they unthinkingly overapply it, resulting in hyper-corrected solecisms like [give Al Gore and I a chance] and the even more despised [between you and I].

But if the person on the street is so good at avoiding [Me is going] and [Give I a break], and even former Rhodes Scholars and Ivy League professors can't seem to avoid [Me and Jennifer are going] and [Give Al and I a chance], might it not be the mavens that misunderstand English grammar, not the speakers?

I doubt it. The ultra elitist snob Pinker might just have to accept the fact that Rhodes Scholars and Ivy League professors simply havenât been taught correct English grammar. As a matter of fact, this has been the case for many years.

The mavens' case about case rests on one assumption: if an entire conjunction phrase has a grammatical feature like subject case, every word inside that phrase has to have that grammatical feature, too. But that is just false.

Whatâs false is Pinkerâs understanding of traditional grammar. His notorious chapter, âThe Language Mavensâ from his book âThe Language Instinctâ is a compendium of errors regarding the assumptions of traditional grammarians.

[Jennifer] is singular; you say [Jennifer is], not [Jennifer are]. The pronoun [She] is singular; you say [She is], not [She are]. But the conjunction [She and Jennifer] is not singular, it's plural; you say [She and Jennifer are], not [She and Jennifer is.] So a conjunction can have a different grammatical number from the pronouns inside it. Why, then, must it have the same grammatical [case] as the pronouns inside it? The answer is that it need not.

There are so many errors in this silly paragraph, itâs hard to know where to begin.

1. Phrases (conjunctive or otherwise) donât have case. A phrase can never be in the nominative, possessive, or objective case.
2. A copulative conjunction like âandâ does not allow one to distribute the meaning of the verb to the individual members. âJack and Jill went up the hillâ does NOT mean âJack went up the hill and Jill went up the hill.â The latter compound sentence may be true, and it may express a similar truth as the former, but it does so in a different way. There is NO distribution of the predicate to the individual members. If there were such a distribution, the verb would be singular. This is easily shown by using an explicitly distributive adjective like âeachâ before the subject terms. In such sentences, we can force the predicate to be applied to the elements of the subject-phrase individually, rather than reckon the elements of the subject-phrase jointly. For example:

âEach leaf and each flower IS proof of Godâs handiwork.â

The distributive adjective âeachâ allows us to apply the predicate (i.e., the verb+all-that-follows-it) to the elements of the subject-phrase individually. The meaning is âEach leaf IS proof of Godâs handiwork, and each flower IS proof of Godâs handiwork.â Notice that if we started with the compound sentence and coalesced it into a simple one, we would NOT change the verb from singular to plural; it remains singular. Conversely, in the sentence âA leaf and a flower ARE proof of Godâs handiwork,â does not mean âA leaf is proof of Godâs handiwork AND a flower is proof of Godâs handiwork.â Both sentences may be true, but they are not interchangeable. The latter expresses two separate thoughts in two separate clauses; the former expresses a single thought: we are asked to consider a leaf and a flower jointly. Obviously, thatâs different from considering them separately..

Subject terms joined by âorâ are distributive: âJack or Jill went up the hillâ means âJack went up the hill or Jill went up the hill.â

A conjunction is just not grammatically equivalent to any of its parts. If John and Marsha met, it does not mean that John met and that Marsha met.

Again, this is usually true for copulative conjunctions like âandâ; it is untrue for disjunctive ones like âor.â Itâs also true to say that âThis is a secret between me and youâ does not mean âThis is a secret between me and this is a secret between you.â

If voters give Clinton and Gore a chance, they are not giving Gore his own chance, added on to the chance they are giving Clinton; they are giving the entire ticket a chance. So just because [Al Gore and I] is an object that requires object case, it does not mean that is an object that requires object case.

First of all, if voters give Gore or Bush a chance, they are giving Gore a chance or they are giving Bush a chance. Second, âAl Gore and Iâ is a phrase, and phrases donât have case, any more than they have person, number, or gender. In the sentence âGive Al Gore and me a chance,â the two object-terms are taken jointly; the direct object of âgiveâ is a compound. They are BOTH object terms and should therefore BOTH be in the objective case. Pinker seems to think that phrases can somehow override the normal syntactic rules governing individual parts of speech; as if a phrase were a kind of âmacro-wordâ that has grammatical veto power over the elements it comprises. This is completely untrue, and it was certainly not the belief of most traditional grammarians in the 18th and 19th centuries.

âJennifer and I are studying grammar.â The subject is a compound; the terms are meant to be taken jointly with ONE predicate (âare studying grammarâ) applying to both. Since both are subjects, both should be in the nominative case. Pinker â like many psychologists and many linguists â is a mystic. He believes that thereâs a separate, invisible entity called a âphraseâ that is in the nominative case, and that this invisible entity is like a container with elements clanking around in it. Those elements, he claims (âJenniferâ and âIâ) need not conform to the case of the invisible container. The invisible container, claims Pinker, has a different case from those of the elements within it. All right. If it has a different case from those of the elements within it, why shouldnât it also have a number from those of the elements within it. The elements within it are plural â there are two of them â but the phrase is a single entity, with one case, performing the function of subject. By the logic of grammar (as Pinker is fond of saying) the phrase âJennifer and Iâ or âMe and Jenniferâ should take a singular verb, not a plural one. We should really be saying âMe and Jennifer is studying grammar.â âMe and Jenniferâ is a single phrase in the nominative case, singular number. Or is Pinker saying that the phrase may have a different case from the elements it comprises, but not a different number? If so, why?

The linguist, Joseph Emonds has analysed the 'Me and Jennifer/Between you and I' phenomenon in great technical detail. He concludes that the language that the mavens want us to speak is not only not English, it is not a possible human language!

Thereâs not single linguist who would actually try to publish an article with constructions like âMe and Noam Chomsky was talking one fine day,â or âThis was a secret theory between Chomsky and I.â

JTTs point on using I or me.

nona the brit — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 09:11:10 GMT

(Mod - I moved this from a learner's question as I felt they just needed a simple answer, which they received from others, rather than a debate on the issue. This is more appropriate for this section, so others interested in the theory of linguistics can continue if they wish.)
Re: I, me
Posted: 17 Mar 2005 07:57 AM
JTT: This is how this issue is viewed by language scientists:

----------------------------------
CGEL:
Prescriptive works instantiating this sort of aesthetic authoritarianism provide no answer to such obvious questions. They simply assert that grammar dictates things, without supporting their claim from evidence.

The descriptive view would be that when most speakers use a form that our grammar says is incorrect, there is at least a prima facie case that it is the grammmar that is wrong. ... If what is involved were a matter of taste, all evidence would be beside the point. But under the descriptivist viewpoint, grammar is not a matter of taste, nor of aesthetics.

{Examples like the one at issue} show, however, that the only completely secure territory of the nominative in Present-day English is with pronouns functioning as the whole subject in a finite clause.

{Examples like the one at issue}, with 'I' as final coordinate is, however, so common in speech and used by so broad a range of speakers that it has to be recognized as a variety of Standard English, ..."
-----------------------------------------------------

http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1994_01_24_thenewrepublic.html

Probably no "grammatical error" has received as much scorn as "misuse" of pronoun case inside conjunctions (phrases with two parts joined by [and] or [or]). What teenager has not been corrected for saying [Me and Jennifer are going to the mall]? The standard story is that the object pronoun [me] does not belong in subject position -- no one would say [Me is going to the mall] -- so it should be [Jennifer and I]. People tend to misremember the advice as "When in doubt, say 'so-and-so and I', not 'so-and-so and me'," so they unthinkingly overapply it, resulting in hyper-corrected solecisms like [give Al Gore and I a chance] and the even more despised [between you and I].

But if the person on the street is so good at avoiding [Me is going] and [Give I a break], and even former Rhodes Scholars and Ivy League professors can't seem to avoid [Me and Jennifer are going] and [Give Al and I a chance], might it not be the mavens that misunderstand English grammar, not the speakers? The mavens' case about case rests on one assumption: if an entire conjunction phrase has a grammatical feature like subject case, every word inside that phrase has to have that grammatical feature, too. But that is just false.

[Jennifer] is singular; you say [Jennifer is], not [Jennifer are]. The pronoun [She] is singular; you say [She is], not [She are]. But the conjunction [She and Jennifer] is not singular, it's plural; you say [She and Jennifer are], not [She and Jennifer is.] So a conjunction can have a different grammatical number from the pronouns inside it. Why, then, must it have the same grammatical [case] as the pronouns inside it? The answer is that it need not.

A conjunction is just not grammatically equivalent to any of its parts. If John and Marsha met, it does not mean that John met and that Marsha met. If voters give Clinton and Gore a chance, they are not giving Gore his own chance, added on to the chance they are giving Clinton; they are giving the entire ticket a chance. So just because [Al Gore and I] is an object that requires object case, it does not mean that is an object that requires object case. By the logic of grammar, the pronoun is free to have any case it wants.

The linguist, Joseph Emonds has analysed the 'Me and Jennifer/Between you and I' phenomenon in great technical detail. He concludes that the language that the mavens want us to speak is not only not English, it is not a possible human language!

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