On 2010-08-16, at 3:58 PM, Geoff wrote:

> has everyone noticed that the objective case is slowly disappearing?

The COCA shows no clear trend for 'me' since 1990.
In the COHA, 'me' has been increasing since 1940, though it's lower now that the early 1800s (I think there's something funky about the first two decades in that corpus.)
In the Time corpus, the low was in the 1930s and the most recent decade was the most 'me'-ful.

There might be a case for a slow wane in 'them' with the 1830s being the peak decade (2,687.51 per million words) in the COHA and the 2000s being the nadir (1,858.83 PMW), but that's not backed up by the Time corpus.

The Time corpus shows a dramatic rise in the use of 'us' since the 1920s, with most of that coming in the last two decades, but the COHA shows a drop from the 1820s to the 1930s and then little change since then.

So, overall no, I haven't noticed the objective case slowly disappearing, but perhaps these timescales aren't long enough. Or perhaps Geoff is referring specifically to syncretism in 'who', where the 'whom' form seems to be about half as common now as it was in the early 1900s and only one sixth as common as in the early 1800s.

Best,
Brett

-----------------------
Brett Reynolds
English Language Centre
Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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