LL-L "Morphology" 2002.02.28 (01) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 28.FEB.2002 (01) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: "John M. Tait" <jmtait at wirhoose.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Morphology" 2002.02.26 (04) [E]

Randy Elzinga wrote:
>
>Ian:
>
>Of course, the real classic is the English 'for you and I'.
>
>Ron:
>
>Very much so.  It's used so frequently around here that I am beginning to
>expect it to become acceptable or even standard, if it has not already done
>so.
>
>Me:
>
>I can remember in the second grade class mates saying something like "George
>and me went to the playground" or "Me and George...".  My teacher would
>correct them saying "George and I..."  but never explained why the first is
>incorrect and the second is correct.  The rule, I suppose, was interpreted
>to be that whenever a noun is joined to the first person singular pronoun by
>the conjunction "and" the subject form of the pronoun is to be used
>(somewhat like disjunctive pronouns in French perhaps).  About two years
>ago, I corrected a friend of mine (who happens to be an English major, and
>is required to take a course on English grammar) on the error in the phrase
>"for you and I" (the preposition involved may have been different).  She
>insisted that I was wrong, basically quoting the same supposed rule that my
>grade two classmates (mis)interpreted.  I see similar errors to this one in
>tutoring mathematics, where a student will look at an example as a model for
>answering a simlar homework problem.  The student focuses on the wrong part
>of the example as the key to to solving the problem, and gets the wrong
>answer.  The root of the overcorrection in the phrase "for you and I", is
>possibly a misdirected focus on what the actual error is.  It's worth
>pointing out, I think, that I've never heard similar corrections being made
>for the other personal pronouns, except, perhaps once in a while by myself.

I often hear parents hypercorrecting their children to say e.g. 'for you
and I' rather than 'for you and me' - sometimes even when they're speaking
Scots. Once, on a TV quiz program, Clement Freud hypercorrected David
Frost's correct grammar - Frost was too polite to argue, no doubt
reinforcing the impression amongst the audience that he was wrong and Freud
(who should have known better, being, I think, not a native English
speaker!) was right. It is noticeable that TV presenters will now often say
'goodbye from (name of colleague) and from me', avoiding both the
classically incorrect 'from...and I' and 'from...and me', which is
increasingly stigmatised as being ignorant, even though it is classically
correct! Probably the presenters are fed up getting letters complaining
about their ignorant grammar whenever they say 'and me', and have to put in
the extra 'from' to make the case explicit.

I think that, from the examples given by Randy, it's important to
distinguish between two different kinds of 'incorrectness'. Phrases like
'Me and him went...' etc. are traditional grammar in many regional dialects
of English (and in Scots - one commentator from the 19th Century describes
such constructions as being classical in Scots, as similar constructions
are in French) whereas the objective use of 'and I' is a purely artificial
construction, with no traditional colloquial basis, arising solely out of a
misguided desire to be correct. That is not to say, of course, that it will
not become universally accepted in the future, as Ron says.

John M. Tait.

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