english pronoun case (was Re: everybody...their)

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:15 PM -0500 4/20/01, Herb Stahlke wrote:
>I still lean away.  I may be missing something, but in the conjoined
>structure the pronouns cannot be unstressed, which means they are in
>focus in this construction.  I don't disagree with his statement,
>that you quote; I just don't see it as supporting his claim that
>it's still case-governed behavior.  It looks a lot more like
>discourse function than like case.
>
>Herb
>
But no matter how strongly the pronoun is focused or stressed or
contrastively contextualized when it IS the (sole) subject, it can't
be ME (or HIM, or HER):

*No, you can't have it, ME gets it!
*No, you're wrong--HIM didn't win, HER won!

It's only when it's NOT the subject that it can show up in the
so-called accusative.  If this were really a matter of discourse
function, these would all be good (since stress IS a matter of
discourse function, these are all in fact stressed, but still
nominative:

*No, you can't have it, *I* get it!
*No, you're wrong--*HE* didn't win, *SHE* won!


larry