James Cochrane wrote a short book/handbook called *Between You and I: A
Little Book of Bad English* and claimed that the subject/object pronoun
swapping started in the 70s due to hypercorrection. However, I don't think
that is true. I have seen many examples of this going very far back to the
beginning of Modern English. I've heard that Shakespeare used both "between
you and I" and "between you and me" and that this may have been common
during this time period.

There have been great discussions on this list about why this confusion
occurs as English grows less dependent on case marking for meaning. Herb
offered an explanation once that took into account discourse/information
structuring pressures, but I'm not having any luck finding it in the ATEG
listserv archives.

John Alexander

On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 11:53 AM, Wollin, Edith <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

>  Here are some questions for the group from a colleague. I think they fall
> in the recent-history-of-the-language category:
>
> ) Was there a specific period in the last 30-40 years where "people" began
>
> to notice a proliferation of "me" used in the subject - especially compound
>
> subjects ("John and me will be late") and began an "education campaign" to
>
> correct it?  If so, how did the "word" get out (newspaper articles, word of
>
> mouth, increased emphasis in K-12/college) that people needed to be more
>
> conscious/clean up this part of their grammar?
>
> B) Is there any opinion or evidence that a sudden realization of the
>
> improper use of "me" instead of "I" in compound subjects led (via
>
> overcorrection or other means) to the seemingly recent proliferation of the
>
> use of "I" in a compound (or even singular) form in the indirect
>
> object/subject of the preposition? Eg: "The chocolate cake was a surprise
>
> for my sister and me."
>
> C) Any concrete examples of this overcorrection making its way into
>
> mainstream media (Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Larry King, Oprah, etc.)?
>
> My own take on this is I started hearing “between you and I” from even
> highly educated people in the 80s. I attributed it to hypercorrection mixed
> with a lack of grammar instruction that would have cued people to know
> when to use the objective and when the subjective. It’s been in this
> decade that I’ve heard the I moving to the indirect object and to the
> objective of prep and subject of infinitive places when it is a compound and
> even sometimes when it is not a compound.
>
> Edith Wollin
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>

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