You're right, Brett.  These uses of pronoun case go way back into Middle English.  Our sense in Formal Standard English today that pronoun forms are, or should be, case-governed is an 18th c. construct when rules of English grammar were formulated along the lines of Latin grammar.  Those rules weren't an accurate representation of English pronoun use in the 18th c. any more than they would have been five centuries earlier or two and a half later.   But they are requirements of Formal Standard English today.

Herb

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Brett Reynolds
Sent: Wednesday, August 18, 2010 8:07 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Case of disappearing cases
Importance: Low

On 2010-08-16, at 10:21 PM, Herb wrote:

> HL Mencken devoted several pages of The American Language to the 
> replacement of subjective pronouns forms with objective, and there has 
> been some modern analysis and description of the phenomenon.  It 
> involves constructions like
> 
> Who's there?  Me.
> Me and Judy went to a movie.
> Bill ran faster than me.
> Me, I wouldn't do it that way.
> Us two will meet you at the mall.
> The high frequency of "between you and I" is one of the few reversals of this pattern.  
> 
> I suspect what's happening in spoken English is a shift from case marking to focus marking. 

But are these NEW?

The OED gives some pretty old examples of many of them under sense 5. I'll just reproduce 5a

 a. Forming with another pronoun or a noun the subject of a plural verb. Cf. I pron. 2a.

1379 in W. Fraser Douglas Bk. (1885) III. 28 Me and myn ayres..haue releissit..al my rycht clayme persuit chalenge or askyng..to fourty markis worth of land. a1500 in R. L. Greene Early Eng. Carols (1935) 308 Qwan he and me browt un us the schete, Of all hys wyll I hym lete. 1645 S. VERNEY in Verney Memoirs, Sis peg and me got an opportunity [etc.]. 1797 T. WRIGHT Autobiogr. (1864) 72 My sweetheart and me began now to think of marriage. 1811 J. AUSTEN Sense & Sensibility II. ii. 31 Anne and me are to go the latter end of January to some relations. 1825 J. WILSON Noctes Ambrosianae xix, in Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. Mar. 366 Me and Wordsworth are aboon the age we live in. 1864 DICKENS Our Mutual Friend (1865) I. I. viii. 68 Me and Mrs. Boffin stood the poor girl's friend. 1886 W. BESANT Children of Gibeon III. II. xxvii. 150We're an easy-going lot, me and my friends. 1893 Northumberland words at Him, Him an' me's gannin'. 1905 Westm. Gaz. 11 Nov. 3/1, I can foresee..that unless me and Ellen advise you, you'll become simply. 1936 H. L. MENCKEN Amer. Lang. (ed. 4) ix. 457 Him and me are friends. 1990 News of World 11 Feb. 11/2 Me and a colleague rushed down to evacuate the area.

Best,
Brett

-----------------------
Brett Reynolds
English Language Centre
Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning Toronto, Ontario, Canada [log in to unmask]

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