Happy New Year, listers.

 

A retired colleague and friend called and asked me to weigh in on the
following grammar question, which someone had posed to him:

 

In the following sentence, is "before" a preposition, in which case the
pronoun should be in the objective case?

 

"The Smiths received their invitation before us."

 

Or, is "before" a subordinating conjunction launching a clause with an
elliptical verb, in which case the pronoun should be in the nominative case?

 

"The Smiths received their invitation before we [did]."

 

My first response was to vote for the latter choice, even though I cannot
imagine ever using "we" in that sentence without also saying/writing the
verb. Unlike the second clause of the sentence "She is three inches taller
than I," the clause starting with "before" sounds really wrong without the
verb plainly in sight (or earshot). We concluded that it probably sounds
wrong precisely because "before" can be a preposition or a subordinator,
whereas "than" can serve only in the latter role. 

 

We debated whether we could really say, though, that one choice was right
and one wrong-or even that one choice was better than the other. 

 

We also considered the notion that "before," when used as a preposition,
isn't really logical in front of an object referring to people because it is
not logical to speak of time ("sooner than") in relation to people. That is,
"before noon," "before Tuesday," and "before next week" all make sense
because those objects are all time designations. But is it logical to refer
to time by saying "before [person/people]"? (Of course, we can use "before"
to mean "in front of," but that is a different sense completely: "She gave
the speech before a crowd of six thousand.")

 

The next day, my colleague called back to tell me that he did some Web
surfing and discovered a number of pages arguing that only "than" and "as"
can have an elliptical verb. Is that so? I know that we use those two to
point out a common pronoun error associated with their use, but are they the
only two?

 

I suppose that a little creative avoidance is in order here! Either of these
sentences would avoid the problem:

 

            "The Smiths received their invitation sooner than we did."

            "The Smiths received their invitation before we did."

 

I told him that I knew JUST the place to go with this issue, and I will
forward your insights to him!

 

Thanks for your thoughts,

 

Nancy

 

Nancy L. Tuten, PhD

Professor of English

Director of the Writing-across-the-Curriculum Program

Columbia College

Columbia, South Carolina

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803-786-3706

 


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