The American Language
well advanced; there are examples of it in Addison. Moreover, it
survived, at least in part, even the attack that was then made upon it
by the professors of the new-born science of English grammar, and to
this day "it is /me/" is still in more or less good colloquial use.
Sweet thinks that it is supported in such use, though not, of course,
grammatically, by the analogy of the correct "it is /he/" and "it is
/she/." Lounsbury, following Dean Alford, says it came into English in
imitation of the French /c'est moi/, and defends it as at least as
good as "it is /I/."[65] The contrary form, "between you and /I/," has
no defenders, and is apparently going out. But in the shape of
"between my wife and /I/" it is seldom challenged, at least in spoken
English.
All these liberties with the personal pronouns, however, fade to
insignificance when put beside the thoroughgoing confusion of the case
forms in vulgar American. "/Us/ fellers" is so far established in the
language that "/we/ fellers," from the mouth of a car conductor, would
seem almost an affectation. So, too, is "/me/ and /her/ are friends."
So, again, are "I seen you and /her/," "/her/ and I set down
together," "/him/ and his wife," and "I knowed it was /her/." Here are
some other characteristic examples of the use of the objective forms
in the nominative from Charters and Lardner:
/Me/ and /her/ was both late.
His brother is taller than /him/.
That little boy was /me/.
/Us/ girls went home.
They were John and /him/.
/Her/ and little Al is to stay here.
She says she thinks /us/ and the Allens.
If Weaver and /them/ had not of begin kicking.
But not /me/.
/Him/ and I are friends.
/Me/ and /them/ are friends.
[Pg221]
Less numerous, but still varied and plentiful, are the substitutions
of nominative forms for objective forms:
She gave it to mother and /I/.
She took all of /we/ children.
I want you to meet /he/ and I at 29th street.
He gave /he/ and I both some.
It is going to cost me $6 a week for a room for /she/ and the baby.
Anything she has is O. K. for /I/ and Florrie.
Here are some grotesque confusions, indeed. Perhaps the best way to
get at the principles underlying them is to examine first, not the
cases of their occurrence, but the cases of their non-occurrence. Let
us begin with the transfer of the objective form to the nominative in
the subject relation. "/Me/ and /her/ was both late" is obviously
sound American; one hears it, or something like it, on the streets
every day. But one never hears "/me/ was late" or "/her/ was late" or
"/us/ was late" or "/him/ was late" or "/them/ was late." Again, one
hears "/us/ girls was there" but never "/us/ was there." Yet again,
one hears "/her/ and John was married," but never "/her/ was married."
The distinction here set up should be immediately plain. It exactly
parallels that between /her/ and /hern/, /our/ and /ourn/, /their/ and
/theirn/: the tendency, as Sweet says, is "to merge the distinction of
nominative and objective in that of conjoint and absolute."[66] The
nominative, in the subject relation, takes the usual nominative form
only when it is in immediate contact with its verb. If it be separated
from its verb by a conjunction or any other part of speech, even
including another pronoun, it takes the objective form. Thus "/me/
went home" would strike even the most ignorant shopgirl as "bad
grammar," but she would use "/me/ and my friend went," or "/me/ and
/him/," or "/he/ and /her/," or "/me/ and /them/" without the
slightest hesitation. What is more, if the separation be effected by a
conjunction and another pronoun, the other pronoun also changes to the
objective form, even though its contact with the verb may be
immediate. Thus one hears "/me/ and /her/ was there," not "/me/ and
/she/"; /her/ and "/him/ kissed," not "/her/ and /he/." Still more,
this second pronoun [Pg222] commonly undergoes the same inflection
even when the first member of the group is not another pronoun, but a
noun. Thus one hears "John and /her/ were married," not "John and
/she/." To this rule there is but one exception, and that is in the
case of the first person pronoun, especially in the singular. "/Him/
and /me/ are friends" is heard often, but "/him/ and /I/ are friends"
is also heard. /I/ seems to suggest the subject very powerfully; it is
actually the subject of perhaps a majority of the sentences uttered by
an ignorant man. At all events, it resists the rule, at least
partially, and may even do so when actually separated from the verb by
another pronoun, itself in the objective form, as for example, in "/I/
and /him/ were there."
In the predicate relation the pronouns respond to a more complex
regulation. When they follow any form of the simple verb of being they
take the objective form, as in "it's /me/," "it ain't /him/," and "I
am /him/," probably because the transitiveness of this verb exerts a
greater pull than its function as a mere copula, and perhaps, too,
because the passive naturally tends to put the speaker in the place of
the object. "I seen /he/" or "he kissed /she/" or "he struck /I/"
would seem as ridiculous to an ignorant American as to the Archbishop
of Canterbury, and his instinct for simplicity and regularity
naturally tends to make him reduce all similar expressions, or what
seem to him to be similar expressions, to coincidence with the more
seemly "I seen /him/." After all, the verb of being is fundamentally
transitive, and, in some ways, the most transitive of all verbs, and
so it is not illogical to bring its powers over the pronoun into
accord with the powers exerted by the others. I incline to think that
it is some such subconscious logic, and not the analogy of "it is
/he/," as Sweet argues, that has brought "it is /me/" to
conversational respectability, even among rather careful speakers of
English.[67]
But against this use of the objective form in the nominative [Pg223]
position after the verb of being there also occurs in American a use
of the nominative form in the objective position, as in "she gave it
to mother and /I/" and "she took all of /we/ children." What lies at
the bottom of it seems to be a feeling somewhat resembling that which
causes the use of the objective form before the verb, but exactly
contrary in its effects. That is to say, the nominative form is used
when the pronoun is separated from its governing verb, whether by a
noun, a noun-phrase or another pronoun, as in "she gave it to mother
and /I/," "she took all of /we/ children" and "he paid her and /I/"
respectively. But here usage is far from fixed, and one observes
variations in both directions--that is, toward using the correct
objective when the pronoun is detached from the verb, and toward using
the nominative even when it directly follows the verb. "She gave it to
mother and /me/," "she took all of /us/ children" and "he paid her and
/me/" would probably sound quite as correct, to a Knight of Pythias,
as the forms just given. And at the other end Charters and Lardner
report such forms as "I want you to meet /he/ and /I/" and "it is
going to cost me $6 a week for a room for /she/ and the baby." I have
noticed, however, that, in the overwhelming main, the use of the
nominative is confined to the pronoun of the first person, and
particularly to its singular. Here again we have an example of the
powerful way in which /I/ asserts itself. And superimposed upon that
influence is a cause mentioned by Sweet in discussing "between you and
/I/."[68] It is a sort of by-product of the pedagogical war upon "it
is /me/." "As such expressions," he says, "are still denounced by the
grammars, many people try to avoid them in speech as well as in
writing. The result of this reaction is that the /me/ in such
constructions as 'between John and /me/' and 'he saw John and /me/'
sounds vulgar and ungrammatical, and is consequently corrected into
/I/." Here the pedagogues, seeking to impose an inelastic and
illogical grammar upon a living speech, succeed only in corrupting it
still more.
Following /than/ and /as/ the American uses the objective form of the
pronoun, as in "he is taller than /me/" and "such as /her/." [Pg224]
He also uses it following /like/, but not when, as often happens, he
uses the word in place of /as/ or /as if/. Thus he says "do it like
/him/," but "do it like /he/ does" and "she looks like /she/ was
sick." What appears here is an instinctive feeling that these words,
followed by a pronoun only, are not adverbs, but prepositions, and
that they should have the same power to put the pronoun into an
oblique case that other prepositions have. Just as "the taller of
/we/" would sound absurd to all of us, so "taller than /he/," to the
unschooled American, sounds absurd. This feeling has a good deal of
respectable support. "As /her/" was used by Swift, "than /me/" by
Burke, and "than /whom/" by Milton. The brothers Fowler show that, in
some cases, "than /him/," is grammatically correct and logically
necessary.[69] For example, compare "I love you more than /him/" and
"I love you more than /he/." The first means "I love you more than (I
love) /him/"; the second, "I love you more than /he/ (loves you)." In
the first /him/ does not refer to /I/, which is nominative, but to
/you/, which is objective, and so it is properly objective also. But
the American, of course, uses /him/ even when the preceding noun is in
the nominative, save only when another verb follows the pronoun. Thus,
he says, "I love you better than /him/," but "I love you better than
/he/ does."
In the matter of the reflexive pronouns the American vulgate exhibits
forms which plainly show that it is the spirit of the language to
regard /self/, not as an adjective, which it is historically, but as a
noun. This confusion goes back to Anglo-Saxon days; it originated at a
time when both the adjectives and the nouns were losing their old
inflections. Such forms as /Petrussylf/ (=/Peter's self/), /Cristsylf/
(=/Christ's self/) and /Icsylf/ (=/I/, /self/) then came into use, and
along with them came combinations of /self/ and the genitive, still
surviving in /hisself/ and /theirselves/ (or /theirself/). Down to the
sixteenth century these forms remained in perfectly good usage. "Each
for /hisself/," for example, was written by Sir Philip Sidney, and is
to be found in the dramatists of the time, though modern editors
always change it to /himself/. How the dative pronoun got itself
[Pg225] fastened upon /self/ in the third person masculine and neuter
is one of the mysteries of language, but there it is, and so, against
all logic, history and grammatical regularity, /himself/, /themselves/
and /itself/ (not /its-self/) are in favor today. But the American, as
usual, inclines against these illogical exceptions to the rule set by
/myself/. I constantly hear /hisself/ and /theirselves/, as in "he
done it /hisself/" and "they don't know /theirselves/." Sometimes
/theirself/ is substituted for theirselves, as in "they all seen it
/theirself/." Also, the emphatic /own/ is often inserted between the
pronoun and the noun, as in "let every man save his /own/ self."
The American pronoun does not necessarily agree with its noun in
number. I find "I can tell each one what /they/ make," "each fellow
put /their/ foot on the line," "nobody can do what /they/ like" and
"she was one of /these/ kind of people" in Charters, and "I am not the
kind of man that is always thinking about /their/ record," "if he was
to hit a man in the head ... /they/ would think /their/ nose tickled"
in Lardner. At the bottom of this error there is a real difficulty:
the lack of a pronoun of the true common gender in English,
corresponding to the French /soi/ and /son/. /His/, after a noun or