LL-L: "Pronouns" [E] LOWLANDS-L, 11.JUN.1999 (01)

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From: "Sandy Fleming" <sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Pronouns

John wrote:

> Ian wrate:
>
> >Thus the English form "you" took over from "ye" as the subject form
> >as well as the oblique. We also see this tendency in forms such as
> >"it is me" (rather than "it is I" or even "It am I"), and very common
> >non-standard forms such as "me and Louise went to the fair" and so
> >on. Examples of this occur in non-Germanic Indo-European languages
> >too - consider "C'est moi" in French (thus an oblique form) where the
> >Latin requires a nominative/subject (as in Spanish "Soy yo").
> >
> >Thus as language develops, the subject forms are the ones that suffer
> >loss. Already in Scots (in Ulster at least) they are only used if the
> >pronoun is the subject of the sentence and stands alone: thus "A gang
> >til (Sc. tae) tha shaws" but "me an him gangs til tha shaws"
>
> I seem to remember reading that Sir James Murray, in his analysis of the
> Scots of the Borders, called this type of pronoun 'indirect' as opposed to
> the subject and oblique forms. In a footnote to a 19th Century Greek
> grammar I have, the author describes these usages as 'classical' in Scots.
>
I'm not acquainted with Murray's analysis, but I am a bit suspicious of the
tendency, firstly, to analyse one language in terms of another language's
grammar, and secondly, to assume that a trend, once started, will continue.

If we considered the adoption of oblique forms (if that's what they are) to
be a trend, wouldn't there once have been a French usage "C'est je"? I've
never heard of it - even Villon (1431-????) fails to use subject complements
in the nominative ("Je l'aime de propre nature//Et elle moy" &c corresponds
to the English "I love her for herself//And her me", not the formal poetic
English style "I love her for herself//And she I").

The history of the answer to the question "Who's there?" in English doesn't
seem to originate with oblique forms at all - originally, the question would
have been answered "I am". "'Tis I" then came in, but soon gave way (as we
see happening in Shakespeare) to "It's me." The "I" in "'Tis I" at this time
may not have been a nominative (nor even a "subject complement"), but simply
the emphatic form of "me" (switching between nominative-accusative forms for
emphasis, as is found in some English dialects for all pronoun forms even
today). Grammarians who respected Latin grammar more than English were soon
up in arms about the "me" usage and insisted on imposing the Latin subject
complement form ("It is I"), which is still in formal use, though rare in
actual speech. So the use of the subject complement form in English is
really just imposed Latin grammar - there may never have been a time when
its use wasn't artificial and formal, or at most, educated into people at
the "best" schools.

It's also worth noting that the Latin answer to "Who's there?" is "Ergo
sum" - "I am". Even the Romans don't seem to have used the subject
complement in this particular phrase!

Sandy Fleming
http:\\www.fleimin.demon.co.uk

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