Re: Cases, again
| From: | Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> |
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| Date: | Friday, March 19, 2004, 18:08 |
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On Thursday, March 18, 2004, at 08:36 PM, Joe wrote:
> Roger Mills wrote:
[snip]
>> him...etc) went to the movies...". Then we'd be left with the
>> inexplicable
>> but deeply ingrained exception, "...between you and I" :-(( [scrapes
>> fingernails on chalkboard]
The explanation is simply (pretentious) hypercorrection. They've been
taught as kids that "Me and John went to the movies" is incorrect; one
should (according to prescriptivists) say: "John and I went to the movies"
. They, therefore, think all instances of "me & X" or "X & me" must be
wrong and 'corrected' to "X and I", whatever the syntactic context. The
same people also _invariably_ say "X or I".
>>
>
> 'between you and I'? I say 'between you and me'. Ah, dialectal
> differences abound.
I say "..between you and me" but, alas, nearly all my colleagues at work
say "..between you and I". Everyday I hear things like "He'll see you and
I this afternoon" (Ach-y-fi!!!). I've even heard horrors like "Please
return the key to Mr X or to I" and - and they're supposed to educators :
=(
I was beginning to think that only me, my wife & H.M. the Queen were the
only only mortals who used "X and me" in all contexts except as subject of
finite verbs where we say "X and I" correctly. I must now add certainly
Roger and Joe (and, hopefully, all conlangers) to ever decreasing band of
the 'enlightened'.
BTW it's nowt to do with dialect - it can occur IME in any dialect; it's
hypercorrective idiolect.
Indeed, this is an example where the prescriptivists have scored an own
goal. By attempting to correct what they regarded as a fault they've
unwittingly created a far worse violation of their proscriptivist code! I'
ve even heard - I kid you not - "You must come to Richard and I's house
sometime."
Ray
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"A mind which thinks at its own expense will always
interfere with language." J.G. Hamann, 1760
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