Re: OT: sorta OT: cases: please help...
| From: | Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, December 9, 2001, 3:30 |
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Quoting Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...>:
> On Thursday, December 6, 2001, at 09:55 , laokou wrote:
> >> someone else mentioned (I seem to recall) the colloquial usage
> >> in English of "it's me" or "that's him" vs. the prescriptivist
> >> "it is I" and "that is he." Does anyone know the origins of
> >> those colloquial forms?
> >
> > Not I. (Pas moi [not: pas je]) My linguisitics prof of twenty
> > years ago claimed that "me, her, him, etc..." were becoming
> > post-verbal (as in: (literally) following the verb) in English,
> > while the "I, she. he" set was pre-verbal (my terminology, not
> > his) (Hence, "It's me."). While I think he rightfully discarded
> > sentences like "Him I saw." as not being to germaine to his
> > main point, he didn't count in less-than-standard-but-understandable
> > things like, "Him and me went to the store." of "Me and Bob drove
> > to the A&W." or hypercorrections like (the almost ubiquitous)
> > "between you and I."
>
> <nod> I've heard that last hypercorrection an awful lot.
I haven't heard it terribly much, but some. At any rate, it really
would be nice if we could all just deny the data as that professor
seems to have (:)). Even if I were a betting person, I wouldn't
bet anything on the future course of the English case system. From
my perspective, it just seems so much up in the air right now that
any attempt to judge would be reckless at best.
=====================================================================
Thomas Wier <trwier@...> <http://home.uchicago.edu/~trwier>
"...koruphàs hetéras hetére:isi prosápto:n /
Dept. of Linguistics mú:tho:n mè: teléein atrapòn mían..."
University of Chicago "To join together diverse peaks of thought /
1010 E. 59th Street and not complete one road that has no turn"
Chicago, IL 60637 Empedocles, _On Nature_, on speculative thinkers