>  Does this mean, 'The children jump and shouts," is okay too?


David, Pinker takes up only noun/pronoun compound constructions. I
don't know what Emonds explores, since I've never read that article.

Do compound verbs bring up the same issues? I don't think so. In "the
children jump and shout," for instance, the children jump and the
children shout, unlike the noun examples that Pinker gives where the
separate constituents do not necessarily do the same thing as the
whole.

I suspect that the pronoun issue in compounds also has something to
do with the basic strangeness of pronoun forms in English. Pronouns
always give us problems because they're the only noun units that have
to show case formatting.  My sense is that the language is switching
from personal pronouns to what have always been reflexive pronouns
(but are now becoming non case-formatted substitutes for personal
pronouns, especially in compounds).  Many of my students (and a heck
of a lot of their parents) would say "Jennifer and myself" or even
"myself and Jennifer."  I don't think the same issue of strangeness
comes up with verbs.  As for the myself issue, even the language
mavens would say "myself included," making "myself" the subject of
the the absolute.  Nonfinite constructions typically take object-form
pronoun subjects. So we would expect "me included." Pronouns are just
odd in English, damn difficult to account for. No wonder they confuse
us all.

But we can take some solace in the fact that Eliot didn't write, "Let
us go then, you and myself?" Max






Max Morenberg, Professor
Department of English
Miami University
Oxford, OH 45056
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