"with Frances and me"

[Laurence Horn]

On Aug 1, 2014, at 8:07 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> I often hear people say "<prep.> <someone> and I" (or, perhaps less frequently, "<trans. verb> <someone> and I") when the same speaker always correctly says "<prep.> me" (or "<trans. verb> me").  That is:
> 
> She came with Tom and I
> She came with me
> She told Tom and I to meet her at the bookstore.
> She told me to meet her at the bookstore.
> 
> Is there an authoritative explanation for this phenomenon?
> 
> Joel

Arnold is the one to respond to this.  He (and his students) have a lot to say on the topic.  Not sure there's anything entirely authoritative, but it's very much worth reading.  (There's an excellent undergraduate essay by his student Thomas Grano from 2006, "“Me and her” meets “he and I”: Case, person, and linear ordering in English coordinated pronouns", which may or may not have been published, and there's even a theory by a generative linguist named Nicholas Sobin that treats the "correct" forms as a grammatical virus.)

LH
> 
> At 7/31/2014 11:51 PM, Jocelyn Limpert wrote:
>> No -- you would say "with me" and not "with I."
>> 
>> 
>> On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 11:44 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> > -----------------------
>> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> > Poster:       Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
>> > Subject:      "with Frances and me"
>> >
>> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> >
>> > Shouldn't that be,
>> >
>> > "with Frances and *I*"? :-( <jk>
>> >
>> > --
>> > -Wilson
>> > -----
>> > All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
>> > come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
>> > -Mark Twain
>> >
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