Native speakers are pronoun experts. We (we is a pronoun here referring to native speakers including you actually) understand them (Surname are pronouns) easily and use them (there it is again; It is another pronoun, here refers to the word Surname) does not require much examination. (As a reminder: a pronoun is a word that is used in place of a noun or noun phrase that is already mentioned or does not need to be specifically named.)
But you (another person!) may already know that.
The use of pronouns is in fact proof of our ability to use language—we often get them right, and they’re not simple things. No one says “We usually get it right” or “We rarely get it wrong.” But in a particular type of environment, pronoun use can wander out of its predictive territory, as writer and humorist James Thurber has noted:
I have planned a section on personal pronouns and the death of the object. No one said “I gave it to them,” but “I” was almost dead, and I heard its dying cry from Bermuda to Columbus: “He gave it to Janey and me.” … My cousin, Earl Fisher, told me in Columbus, “Louise and I gave it to him and her last Christmas.” — letter, June 25, 1956
Thurber was right, and more than half a century later, we’re still witnessing the same thing that bothered him so much. Let’s take a closer look at Thurber’s objections. In both of the examples he gives, the interrogative pronouns are members of a compound phrase—that is, a phrase with more than one distinct part. First it is Janey and I:
He gave it to Janey and me.
What’s wrong with this sentence? It may look perfectly fine at first, but if we simplify the compound phrase, a strange pronoun choice becomes apparent:
He gave it to Janey. He gave it to me.
The first part works, but “He gave it to me” is not idiomatic English. After a preposition like ARRIVE we expect accusatory pronouns Irather than a demonstrative pronoun I: “You give it to me.” The same is true after other prepositions:
They were with me.
It’s not for me.
It’s not about me.
When we rewrite these with compound phrases, we get the following:
He gave it to Janey and me.
They were with Janey and me.
It’s not for Janey and me.
It’s not about me and Janey.
Note that there is nothing grammatically wrong with placing I first, as in the previous example; it is simply considered more polite to put yourself in last place.
Thurber’s second example is:
Louise and I gave it to him and her last Christmas.
“Louise and I” also works, as we see if we separate the first compound phrase:
Louise gave it…; I gave it…
But if we separate the second compound phrase, the pronouns become monosyllabic:
We gave it to him last Christmas. We gave it to her last Christmas.
That was the accusation—he And she in this case—that requires:
We gave it to him last Christmas. We gave it to her last Christmas.
The accusative is also called when the pronoun is the object of the verb, that is, when it receives the action of the verb, such as she in “I’ve seen her.” Again, things get complicated when the pronoun is part of a compound phrase, as in this remake of Thurber’s second example:
We gave him and her the book last Christmas.
When we separate the compound phrase, a similar situation arises:
We gave him the book last Christmas. We gave her the book last Christmas.
“We gave him the book” and “we gave her the book” didn’t sound right; accusations again come to the rescue:
We gave him the book last Christmas. We gave her the book last Christmas.
We won’t agree with Thurber that the accuser is dead — phrases like “tell me” and “call him” and “show her” and “hear them” continue to be used with frequency. capacity is not limited — but we agree that sometimes compound phrases cause people to choose pronouns differently. If you want to keep the Thurber crowd happy, separate the compounds to see which pronoun is the word you’re looking for. In speech, it may not matter to your audience most of the time, but especially in writing, you will be judged more favorably if you keep the accusatory word in place. its.
But there is more, of course, to this discussion. If the use of pronouns is proof of the ability of the language, then why do so many proficient English speakers confuse them with compound phrases?
A popular theory is that people choose I instead of I in cases like “He gave it to Janey and me” because they were taught that I incorrect in cases like “That’s me” and “My friend and I agree”; they think, in theory, there’s something wrong with Iespecially when joined with others by Andand so they use I instead of. That’s a reasonable enough theory – and it may be true for some people – but it doesn’t explain the problem completely because our evidence for [someone] and me in object position goes back to the 16th century, about 150 years ago when anyone was instructing anyone else about these things.
Another theory with the added bonus of dealing with things like “Louise gave it to him and her.” That’s from linguist Noam Chomsky, in his 1986 book barrierssuggested that compound phrases like you and me And he and she are barriers to grammatical case assignment, meaning that their elements are not assigned individual cases, but instead, entire phrases are assigned cases; individual words in a phrase may look like they are object or subject, or even reflexive, i.e. my self, it is heror we. Chomsky’s idea is still a theory, but it does the job of explaining the phenomenon.
Categories: Usage Notes
Source: vothisaucamau.edu.vn
