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From: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Rogue pronouns
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References: <19960905104609.baaa00752@babyblue.cs.yale.edu> <3265019C.40F9@aspentech.com> <326D48E0.59C3@scruznet.com> <32726B6B.4C9D@scruznet.com>
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 23:00:06 GMT
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In article <32726B6B.4C9D@scruznet.com>,
Mike Wright  <darwin@scruznet.com> wrote:
>I'm posting this for: "Robert G. Schmertz" <schmertz@wam.umd.edu>
>
>> > In article <326D48E0.59C3@scruznet.com>,
>> Mike Wright  <darwin@scruznet.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >One thing I see a lot of in modern English is an inability to get the
>> >case of the first person singular pronoun right in compound subjects and
>> >objects. The most common error is the use of "I" as the object of a verb
>> >or preposition, such as, "this is between Ben and I" or "please tell
>
>This drives me absolutely bananas.  I've heard college professors and
>department chairs use this construction.

You're in the same boat with my gentleman friend (himself a college 
professor); I don't think any other construction I use annoys him more,
not even attaching the possessive 's' to a subject pronoun.  E.g.:  "Mark
and I's bedroom faced southeast."  (It's a classic example of something I
would have totally denied ever saying had I not been caught in the act
several times.)  Although I never use the prescriptivist construction
("Mark's and my...") in speech, I occasionally set my sights on it and
come out with the compromise form "Mark and my's...".

The only example of this that has ever really bugged me was in the
Live Aid song "We Are the World", where they sing:

There's a choice we're making
We're saving our own lives
It's true we make a better day,
Just you and me(*)

But it's not because I consider the last line another instance of a
"common error".  It's because the more formal variant "Just you and I"
would have actually been in the neighborhood of a rhyme with "lives"; the
"me" is just jarring and I don't understood why they put informality of
register above poetic considerations.

Although it sounds perfectly natural to be, I can see how this
non-standard case agreement could be jarring; what surprises me that so
many people still have trouble with "their" in the singular.  (E.g.
"Everyone should bring their towel along").  It fills an important need in
the language, the need for a gender-neutral third-person singular
pronomial adjective, and does it without introducing any ambiguity or
resorting to ugly neologisms. 

(*)John Wesley Harding brilliantly parodied this as:
This is crap we're singing
We're stoned out of our minds
And we didn't even make it rhyme
Except this bit

-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
