"It is me who likes sprouts"

[Steve Long]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
In a message dated 8/10/02 9:35:54 AM, cecil at cecilward.com writes:
<< Maybe this was the driver towards the modern "It is me" vs a possible
earlier "*I am it".
Let's take the modern sentence pairs,
        It's me. The [one that likes/*like sprouts].
        It's John. The [one who/that likes sprouts].
        It's us. (=We are the ones.) The [ones who/that *likes/like
sprouts]. We can elide them together and remove the duplication
        It is us who/that *likes/like sprouts  -etc
Notice that the agreement pattern now fits. >>

-------Note that the examples above all imply some prior question about what
or who likes sprouts.  In English, the statement "John likes sprouts" conveys
no less meaning than "It's John who likes sprouts" unless we assume a
question has been asked about who likes sprouts.
-------In some beat generation novel that I can no longer identify (it could
have been Kerouac), a character responds to a knock on the door with "Who is
it?"  The answer she gets is "Us is it!"  "Who?"  "Us, you ninny!  Us is it!"
 The joke I guess was in taking the syntax literally.
------I've seen this explained as the difference between "pronominal identity
construction" and "expletive identity construction."  That helps I think
would rule out any 'possible earlier *I am it,' mentioned above.
-------So, perhaps this construction has a functional explanation that needs
at least two sentences to explain it.  In English, it seems that "it is I..."
always implies or is a response to a prior question.  E.g., "It was I who
parted the sea!"  In real-life or dramatic dialogue, this statement of fact
implies someone was wondering or asking, who parted the sea?
------The most accurate sense might be - Q: Who is [it] at the door?  A:  We
are at the door. [We it is who are at the door.]  Compare "Who was it at the
door?"  "It was the mailman." [The mailman was at the door.]
------The construction of the question above anticipates or rather invites
the construction of the answer.  And the construction of the answer appears to
 primarily function to avoid repeating the final phrase.  In essence, the
questioner has invited loss of the redundancy of adding "at the door" to the
answer, offering "it is" as the substitute to the responder.
------Pronomial agreement may have been lost or purposely left ambiguous in
the question first and then carried over into the construction of the answer.
 [What or who is it that walks this dreary night?]
------A character in a story who enters a scene announcing, "'Tis I, the Duke
of Gloucester!"  answers an implied question in the minds of other characters
or the audience. [Who is he?  Who is it who just came on stage now?]
------A "'Tis I!" all by itself with no prior question raised is a non
sequitur.  On this basis perhaps one might conjecture that this form of
construction arose in specific contexts and was functionally created by
developments in interrogatory construction.
Steve Long