Johanna,
I did a paper on this in CLS 20 (Chicago Linguistics Society), mid 80s,
I think. It was a bit of over-analysis, but the point was that English
pronoun usage is heavily determined by pragmatics although some of it is
syntactic. If there is a single pronoun subject, the nominative form is
used. If the subject is more than just the pronoun, as in "us two", "me
and him", etc., the objective form tends to be used in speech. In
predicate nominatives with contracted "be" it's objective. If it's
disjunctive, the objective form is used.
I explained this on the basis of the fact that the objective form is
normally used for new information or in focus. If the subject is just a
pronoun, it's topic, and so the objective or focus form doesn't get
used. If the subject's more than a pronoun, obviously the subject is
too heavy to be just a topic, and so the focus form appears.
I think that's basically how it works in non-Standard Spoken English,
although it does get a little more complicated.
Herb
My first linguistics paper ever was on the topic of "disjunctive"
pronouns in French, and the fact (or so I concluded) that English was
coming to resemble French in this way. It is unexceptional in French
to say "c'est moi" (it is me), or to say "lui, il ne sais rien" (him,
he doesn't know anything). French uses objective case in such
situations, and English does, too.
I now suspect that there is a discourse motivation (using objective
case in focus position, perhaps?) for these "disjunctive" pronouns.
Dr. Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
Linguistics Minor Advisor
English Department
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Tel.: 805.756.2184
Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596
Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374
URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
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