[Ads-l] "goes I"

ADSGarson O'Toole adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM
Thu Jun 16 15:21:08 UTC 2016


As Arthur Conan Doyle wrote in “The Boscombe Valley Mystery”:
‘There, but for the grace of God, goes Sherlock Holmes.'
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/06/grace/

On Thu, Jun 16, 2016 at 11:03 AM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Reminiscent, of course, of people who say, "Till death do they part."
>
> Except they spell it { 'Til}.
>
> JL
>
> On Thu, Jun 16, 2016 at 10:14 AM, Robin Hamilton
> <robin.hamilton3 at virginmedia.com> wrote:
>> “Very highly educated CNN interviewee, recalling that he and his family had recently been at the spot of the alligator attack in Orlando: "It all kind of rang home: 'But for the grace of God goes I.'
>>
>> Not only is it ungrammatical - it don't even make no sense!
>>
>> JL”
>>
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>> Truncation of “(There) [sic] but for the grace of God goes I”.
>>
>> So grammatical, if you allow for truncation and inversion.
>>
>> 4430 ghits for the “goes I” version;  1220 ghits for “goes me”.
>>
>> Though why, “There I go” should be grammatical, as well as “There goes I” ...
>>
>> As Henry II said, ‘Who is it that shall rid me of this troublesome pronoun case ending?’
>>
>> Robin Hamilton
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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