I was passing through a student commons area the other day when I
heard one guy say to a couple sitting with him, "Him and Sara left
with Joy and I."  By any standard of Standard English these are
unacceptable forms.  However one of the things that codifiers of
SE tend not to recognize is how long-term trends in English shape
these constructions.  English had effectively lost its noun case
system by late Middle English, so that pronoun case became a weak
vestige of a formerly strong system of grammatical conditioning.
That is, the case form of a noun or a pronoun was heavily
determined by its grammatical role in its clause.  As this broke
down, the grammatical conditioning of pronoun case also began
breaking down so that what become more important than
role-in-clause was discourse function.  English had for a long
time been shifting from a verb-final word order in very early OE
to its modern verb-medial order.  The effect of that has been to
put objects in final position, which is also the position for new
information.  As case weakened, the object form came to serve, in
Early Modern English already, as the new-information or focus
form.  Then, when a pronoun that represented new information would
be used as subject, speakers would naturally use the
me/her/him/us/them forms because they are used for new
information.  Notice that in the student utterance I gave above,
"him and Sara" is new information and so "him" is used even though
it's subject.  The "I" in "Joy and I" is old information in that
conversation, and so the weak, unstressed form "i" is used.

My point is not that SE should now regard all of this as correct
but rather that there is a lot of grammatical system and sense to
the way people use pronoun case today.  Traditional grammarians
tend not to see it--and see such utterances as hopelessly
anomalous--because traditional grammar lacks the analytical
apparatus for dealing with this sort of historical change.

Herb Stahlke
Ball State University

>>> [log in to unmask] 09/20/00 02:31PM >>>
This discussion of can versus could is fascinating to me because
of the
larger issue that it raises, i.e., is there any sense in which a
usage
that is acceptable to a significant number of speakers -- or even
to one
speaker -- can be "wrong."  I am certain that a huge majority of
my
students would find "can" perfectably acceptable in that sentence
about
the lonely kid. Nevertheless, I share the feeling that it is
wrong, wrong,
wrong. This seems to me to be an interesting contradiction.  I
feel the
same way about "between you and I" despite the fact that that
would
probably be approved by a large majority.




On Wed, 20 Sep 2000, Wollin, Edith wrote:

> I don't find it acceptable, and it isn't one of those things
that I hear
> many other people say either.  Using I as the object of a
preposition when
> there is a compound object is used by everyone but a few of us
grammar
> people now, (at least in Washington)but I don't hear can in
this context.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Johanna Rubba [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2000 10:02 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Verb form of if-subjunctive
>
>
>  "(1)The little child is lonely; he would be happier if he had
someone that
> he can play with."
>
> Do any of the native speakers on this list find this sentence
> grammatical? I can't imagine this being acceptable to anyone,
but maybe
> I'm wrong. The 'that' clause requires 'could'.
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Johanna Rubba   Assistant Professor, Linguistics
> English Department, California Polytechnic State University
> One Grand Avenue  * San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
> Tel. (805)-756-2184  *  Fax: (805)-756-6374 * Dept. Phone.
756-259
> * E-mail: [log in to unmask] *  Home page:
http://www.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
>                                        **
> "Understanding is a lot like sex; it's got a practical
purpose,
> but that's not why people do it normally"  -            Frank
Oppenheimer
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>