Re: THEORY: English Pronouns (was Re: THEORY: Ergativity and polypersonalism)

On 23 Jan 2005, at 2.15 pm, Rob Haden wrote:

> Saw this in last week's messages and found it interesting.
>
> On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 13:45:56 +1100, Tristan McLeay
> <conlang@...> wrote:
>
>> Difference in order is sufficient; accusative doesn't mean there's an
>> accusative case, but rather the subject of a transitive verb is
>> expressed in the same manner as the subject of an intransitive verb,
>> such as in English. (ish, other people can probably explain it better)
>
>> Actually, if anyone told you that English has a solid
>> nominative--accusative distinction in pronouns, they were lying.
>> Examples to the contrary include 'It's me', 'John and me went to the
>> milkbar', 'between you and I'. I think also that normally when there's
>> a strong nom./acc. distinction, the pronoun-in-isolation form is the
>> nominative, whereas in English you'd use the so-called object-form
>> (-'Who would?' -'Me!').
>
> Of course, the proper usages would be "It's I", "John and I went to the
> bar", "between you and me", "'Who would?' - 'I!'". :b

The correct uses actually include "It's me" and -"Who would?" - "Me!".
I don't know where you got the idea those are wrong from; English
pronouns don't work the same as Latin ones, what with English not being
Latin. English doesn't have nominative or accusative cases, not even in
pronouns. I'm not what sure what they should be called, but perhaps
someone could inform us.

('Between you and I' makes my ears bleed, but more because I prefer
'me' with conjunctions, I imagine; but seeing as you might tell me I
can't say "John and me are going to the movies", and since I find it
difficult agreeing the 'I' and 'are' in "John and I are going to the
movies", I tend to look for alternatives in writing... (in speech I say
whatever, I don't think far enough to find "John and I are"
ungrammatical when it's not written and like anyone would care if I
said "John and me are"...))

> The interesting question, though, is what causes the confusion in
> usage.
There is no "confusion in usage" (unless you mean people describing
'Me!' as wrong); hence, there is nothing to cause it (if you mean the
thing in brackets, it's people who think English is a relex of Latin).

> Also interesting: there is far more spreading of the object pronouns
> into
> the subject pronouns' domain than vice-versa.  Phrases like "It's me"
> actually sound more normal to me than "It's I", which sounds almost
> stiltingly formal.
I'd describe it as stylistic clash: similar to 'the person to who it
happened' or 'the person whom it happened to'.

> The most grammatically proper but wrong-sounding usage
> would be "'Who would?' - 'We!'"
Evidently not, seeing as:

> -- almost any native speaker would instead
> answer "Us!"
which just about defines 'grammatically proper'. English ain't Latin.

> I wonder if, in future English, this trend will continue, abolishing
> all
> distinctions between subject and object pronouns with the former taking
> over the latter.  Things like that must have happened many times over
> in
> many other languages.
Not the least of which is English: We've already lost 'ye' to the same
phenomenon, though the opposite happened to 'him' (as acc. of 'it', not
'he') and 'whom'.

I wouldn't be at all suprised if it happened; but I doubt I'll be alive
when it has.

--
Tristan.

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