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From: lilandbr@scn.org (Leland Bryant Ross)
Subject: Re: How do you parse "It's me" ?
Message-ID: <DwGy4I.GpA@scn.org>
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Reply-To: lilandbr@scn.org (Leland Bryant Ross)
Organization: Seattle Community Network
References: <runderhill-1908961626150001@underhill.sdsu.edu> <200@stt.win-uk.net> <4uq0o3$309@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk><203@stt.win-uk.net> <4usj0s$7ca@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk><4utpd7$h84@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca><jefdrUAfXxEyEwlj@vision25.demon.co.uk> <211@stt.win-uk.net> <
Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 03:38:41 GMT
Lines: 54

3215D7F0.2199@southeast.net>
Organization: Seattle Community Network

In a previous article, runderhill@mail.sdsu.edu (Robert Underhill) says:

>In article <3215D7F0.2199@southeast.net>, "Scott C. Schank"
><ergosum@southeast.net> wrote:
>
>> Iain Davidson wrote:
>> 
>> Did I miss something important, or are you saying that "Me and you are 
>> going to the cinema" is NOT ungrammatical in your idiolect?
>> 
>> > and why "Me am going to the cinema" is ungrammatical but
>> > "Me and you are going to the cinema" is not.
>
>If you don't like "Me and you are going to the cinema," try "Me and you are
>going to the movies."
>

But of course the *topic* has to do with *grammaticality*, not *contextual
plausibility*;  that, and the parsing of "It's me."  

Try "'Tis" in place of "It's".  If you're like me, or do I really mean "If
you're like I"?, "It's I" and "It's me" are both quite possible, normal
utterances.  Although "I know you're supposed to [/'spo st@/]" say "It's
I", and I often do, when I say or hear "It's me" I have only my education,
*not* my innate sense of right and wrong (there's that darn original sin
again) as a native speaker, to tell me something's amiss.  In very sooth, 
I'm not at all sure which feels "better" to me, nor which I use more often.

*However*, with "'Tis", perhaps owing wholly to Camelot, "'Tis I" feels 
*much* more "right" than "'Tis me."

But to return to "Me and you" as subject, certainly I have heard native 
speakers of American English say things like

[on discovering his son has stolen a candy bar]

Me and you are going back to that store and I'm [*never* "me'm"] gonna 
watch while you give them that candy bar back and say you're sorry you 
took it.  You hear me?

I'm not sure how contrived the situation or how agitated my emotions 
would have to be to induce that sort of grammar in *me*, but it 
*definitely* occurs, and is *not* ungrammatical in the scientific sense 
(though of course it *is* in the pedantic sense, but then pedants' kids 
never shoplift...)

--
Liland Brajant ROS'                "Sed krom se iuj el la  homoj  malsategas,
P O Box 30091                      kiel do la socio povas posedi strukturon?"
Seattle, WA 98103 Usono            -Gulivero (Ted Danson) en la nova televida
Tel. (206) 633-2434                 versio,  citita  en  "Baptist Peacemaker"
