Re: THEORY: case systems [was Viko Notes]

People interested in this subject might like to find the Spring 1997 issue
(vol 28 #2) of _Linguistic Inquiry_, in which Nicholas Sobin claims that the
prescribed construction "Mary and I left early" (as opposed to the common
"Mary and me . . .") is actually contrary to universal grammar and not part
of anyone's natural linguistic competence.  The same claim is made about
several other constructions of "prestige English."  The article is entitled
"Agreement, Default Rules, and Grammatical Viruses".

Doug

In a message dated 6/26/2002 8:21:59 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
a-rosta@ALPHAPHE.COM writes:


> Marcus Smith
> > On Wed, 26 Jun 2002, Thomas R. Wier wrote:
> >
> > > (Note that your first example is almost always an instance
> > > of hypercorrection, in that that speaker usually doesn't also say
> *"give
> > > it to Jim and he" or "give it to Jim and they".
> >
> > This is the standard interpretation, but is probably wrong. As far back
> as
> > can be traced by written records, Indo-European languages have been
> > putting non-initial conjuncts in the nominative case (not consistently,
> > but as an option).
>
> The evidence strongly suggests that nonsubjective "and I" did indeed
> originate as a hypercorrection (though it is no longer hypercorrective),
> and hence that the cross-linguistic parallels you cite serve only to
> demonstrate the general point that some sorts of morphosyntactic
> marking are weakened by coordination. That is, coordination has a
> predispositive effect on case mismatches, but the actual aetiology of
> this particular change is hypercorrection.
>
> The evidence is this:
> (1) A prescriptive rule ordaining that the first person singular
> pronoun be ordered last in coordination, misinterpreted as a rule
> requiring "I" rather than "me".
> (2) A prescriptive rule stigmatizing conjunct "me" as subject of
> a finite clause, and furthermore prescribing "I" as subject of
> a nonfinite clause (contrary to the general trend of usage).
> (3) The distribution of nonsubjective "and I" across registers,
> text-types and sociolects: although it is rapidly spreading, I
> believe that a large and diverse enough corpus would show it
> starts out as formal rather than informal, spoken rather than
> written, and originating in a particular stratum of the middle
> class that is particularly susceptible to prescriptively driven
> hypercorrection.
>
> > It is also untrue that these mismatches only occur with "I", though this
> > is also what you frequently read or hear. Shakespeare used lines like
> > "between my good man and he" (Merry Wives). This use of "I" is more
> common
> > than the others, but it is not unique.
>
> I suspect that those older examples are part of a different
> phenomenon, where again the case mismatch is conditioned by
> the coordination, but the actual cause is not hypercorrective
> but semantic.
>
> As for contemporary English, if "and he/she/they/we" is occurring,
> I think the stats would show that it is due to generalization of
> the already established "and I" pattern.
>
> --And.
>

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