they and them

[Laurence Horn]

At 2:52 PM -0400 4/15/05, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
>In a message dated 4/15/05 9:57:48 AM, laurence.horn at YALE.EDU writes:
>
>
>>
>>  Well, perhaps, but note also "Me, myself, and I".  Of course, in
>>  their classic (1975) paper on the topic, Bill Cooper and Haj Ross did
>>  call the overarching principle "Me First".
>>
>
>I do think that "Me, myself, and I" is a sardonic reference to the
>prescriptivist admonition that "I" should come last in a compound.
>Still "Me" definitely
>acts like the unmarked case in folk speech, as in "Me 'n' Jim's buddies."

Yes, if memory serves, Cooper & Ross brought up the "natural" nature
of "me and him", "me and you" (conforming to the Me First principle)
and the learned nature of "he and I", "you and I".  But for them the
principle would only be relevant for distinguishing person and number
for pronouns, not case.

Larry