Subject: LL-L: "Pronouns" [E] LOWLANDS-L, 12.JUN.1999 (03)

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From: "John M. Tait" <jmtait at jmt.prestel.co.uk>
Subject: Pronouns

Sandy wrote:

>If we considered the adoption of oblique forms (if that's what they are) to
>be a trend, wouldn't there once have been a French usage "C'est je"? I've
>never heard of it - even Villon (1431-????) fails to use subject complements
>in the nominative ("Je l'aime de propre nature//Et elle moy" &c corresponds
>to the English "I love her for herself//And her me", not the formal poetic
>English style "I love her for herself//And she I").

"I love her for herself//And she me."?
>
>The history of the answer to the question "Who's there?" in English doesn't
>seem to originate with oblique forms at all - originally, the question would
>have been answered "I am". "'Tis I" then came in, but soon gave way (as we
>see happening in Shakespeare) to "It's me." The "I" in "'Tis I" at this time
>may not have been a nominative (nor even a "subject complement"), but simply
>the emphatic form of "me" (switching between nominative-accusative forms for
>emphasis, as is found in some English dialects for all pronoun forms even
>today).

Can you think of any examples of this? I'm asking because I have just read
a paper which states that the relationship between _du_ and _dee_ in
Shetlandic is one of emphasis (they called it stress) whereas I thought
that _du_ indicated the subject and _dee_ oblique cases. I can't see that
in the phrases:

du saa me

and

I saa dee

the difference is one of emphasis - otherwise 'it wis _dee_ at I saa'
should be 'it wis *du at I saa.' The same paper considers the difference
between 'ae' and 'ane' to be one of emphasis. And what about 'dae and 'div'?

It seems to me that this is owing to the the actual usage of these forms
being misapprehended by people who have lost the distinctions in their own
dialects.

Grammarians who respected Latin grammar more than English were soon
>up in arms about the "me" usage and insisted on imposing the Latin subject
>complement form ("It is I"), which is still in formal use, though rare in
>actual speech. So the use of the subject complement form in English is
>really just imposed Latin grammar - there may never have been a time when
>its use wasn't artificial and formal, or at most, educated into people at
>the "best" schools.

All the more odd that the 'C'est moi' type of construction occurs in
French, a romance language. But other romance languages use the other -
formal English - type of construction, don't they?

Is there any actual documentation about the history of such usages in
French/English/Scots?

(I'm finding it extremely difficult to write in English with reference to
something written by Sandy - I keep lapsing into Scots and then having to
re-write it!)

John M. Tait.

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