LINGUIST List 3.648

Mon 24 Aug 1992

Disc: Drift

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Price Caldwell, Re: 3.647 Drift
2. JEROEN WIEDENHOF, Drift: 'case & coordination'
3. John Cowan, Drift: the way it works
4. (ohn Cowan, drift: government and case

Message 1: Re: 3.647 Drift

On page 25 of this week's TIME magazine (Aug. 24, 1992) the second
sentence reads:

	As the polls regularly probe the magnitude of his problem, the
 	President demonstrated again that the problem is he.

Does the last word sound wrong? I would have preferred "himself."
Why? My suspicion is that it is a matter of markedness. That is,
"he" is unmarked; but we need a marked term for this position. Such
an explanation might also help with "me and you can do it," and
others such.

I don't know of anyone who has argued for a markedness theory in
performance, but I am very much interested in it. If any of you do
know of such arguments, please let me know of them.

--Price Caldwell

Dick Hudson (19 Aug 92, Linguist List Vol-3-641 'Drift') asks:

 'Does anyone know of any (other) language in which case-selection inter-
 acts with coordination? I'm told that in, for example, German, which
 really does have case, there's no temptation for anyone, anywhere, to use
 a different case according to whether or not coordination is involved.'

In the Dutch newspaper _NRC_Handelsblad_ (21 Aug 92, p. 7), J.L. Heldring's
monthly catalog of errors quoted from written sources includes the following
sentence (original quote, my glosses & translation):

 ? Ik heb niet alleen de Kroaten in de Balkan voor ogen, maar
 I have-1-SG not alone the Croat-PL in the Balkans for eye-PL but

 ook zij die elders wonen.
 also they who elsewhere live-PL

 'I have in my mind not just the Croats who live in the Balkans, but also
 those living elsewhere.'

Heldring here criticizes the use of _zij_ 'they', apparently because he
prefers _hen_ 'them' or _hun_ 'them' (the question '_hen_ or _hun_?', both
of which are oblique in standard Dutch, is a vexed problem in itself).
Even though the relative clause may have played a role in the original
writer's decision to use _zij_, coordination (or simply more distance) may
have been an additional factor. At least, Heldring's example sounds less
exceptional to me than:

 ?? Ik heb zij die elders wonen voor ogen.
 I have-1-SG they who elsewhere live-PL for eye-PL
 'I have those living elsewhere in mind.'

Jeroen Wiedenhof
Leiden University

I may have posted on this earlier, but the Mencken model seems to work
better than anything I have seen before for explaining the distribution
of I/me, he/him, she/her, etc. in casual speech:

ses I-form;

2. a pronoun adjacent to the verb and acting as object uses me-form;

3. a pronoun separated from the verb and acting as subject uses me-form;

4. a pronoun separated from the verb and acting as object uses I-form;

5. two pronouns conjoined have the same form, which is me-form as subject
 and I-form as object.

This model predicts the following unstarred forms and forbids the following
starred forms, all of which agrees with my native-speaker intuitions:

	I saw him.
	*Him saw I.
	Him and John saw me.
	*He and John saw me.
	John and I saw him.
	*John and me saw him.
	Me and him saw John.
	*I and he saw John.
	*Me and he saw John.
	*I and him saw John.
	John saw he and I.
	*John saw him and I.
	*John saw him and me.
	*John saw he and me.

Of course, after years of pickling in Standard English forms, my intuitions
probably aren't all they should be. In particular, I find the starred
examples which use "I" for "me" less objectionable than the ones which use
"he" for "him".

On another note, my native dialect tended to order pronouns Latin-style:
"first person first, second person second, third person third" (the historical
origin of the ordinal names). Standard English demands first-person last.
What about other dialects?

--
John Cowan	cowansnark.thyrsus.com		...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan
			e'osai ko sarji la lojban.

Dick Hudson's suggestion that English may no longer have case should be
best considered in light of the history of case in English: Old English
verbs frequently took both nominal and pronominal objects not only in
the accusative but in the dative and the genitive as well. It's been
longer than I care to admit since I looked at these structures, but it
is clear that variation has always been fairly normal.

Also, I have never looked at the _myself_ phenomenon (Give it to John
and myself/ Sarah and myself presented a paper at the conference), but
I've always suspected it is somehow part of the larger between you and
I picture.

Dennis Baron debaronuiuc.edu
Dept. of English office: 217-244-0568
University of Illinois messages: 217-333-2392
608 S. Wright St fax: 217-333-4321
Urbana IL 61801