American Language (87 page)

The substitution of
who
for
whom
in the objective case, just noticed, is typical of a general movement toward breaking down all case distinctions among the pronouns, where they make their last stand in English and its dialects. This movement, of course, is not peculiar to vulgar American; nor is it of recent beginning. So long ago as the Fifteenth Century the old clear distinction between
ye
, nominative, and
you
, objective, disappeared, and today the latter is used in both cases. Sweet says that the phonetic similarity between
ye
and
thee
, the objective form of the true second singular, was responsible for this confusion.
¹¹⁷
In modern spoken English, indeed,
you
in the objective often has a sound far more like that of
ye
than like that of
you
, as, for example, in “How do
y
’ do?” and in American its vowel takes the neutral form of the
e
in the definite article, and the word becomes a sort of shortened
yeh
. But whenever emphasis is laid upon it,
you
becomes quite distinct, even in American. In “I mean
you
,” for example, there is never any chance of mistaking it for
ye
. In Shakespeare’s time the other personal pronouns of the objective case threatened to follow
you
into the nominative, and there was a compensatory movement of the nominative pronouns toward the objective. The late T. R. Lounsbury collected many examples.
¹¹⁸
Marlowe used “Is it
him
you seek?”, “ ’Tis
her
I esteem” and “Nor
thee
nor
them
shall want”; Fletcher used “ ’Tis
her
I admire”; Shakespeare himself used “That’s
me.
” Contrariwise, Webster used “What difference is between the duke and
I?
” and Greene
used “Nor earth nor heaven shall part my love and
I
.” Krapp unearthed many similar examples from the Restoration dramatists.
¹¹⁹
Etheredge used “ ’Tis
them
,” “It may be
him
,” “Let you and
I
” and “Nor is it
me
”; Matthew Prior, in a famous couplet, achieved this:

This free exchange, in fact, continued until the Eighteenth Century was well advanced; there are examples of it in Addison. Moreover, it survived, on the colloquial level, even the furious attack that was then made upon it by grammarians, and to this day
it’s me
is in good usage, and most authorities of any sense, if they do not actually defend it, at least condone it.
¹²⁰
On the level of the vulgate, it is firmly intrenched. The schoolmarm continues to inveigh against it, but her admonitions go unheeded. Similarly, “
us
fellas” is so far established that “
we
fellas” from the mouth of an iceman would seem almost an affectation. So, too, is “
Me
and
her
are friends.” So, again, are “
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, Lardner, Rogers and others:

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.”
¹²¹
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 “
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 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
was 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 powerfully, and is the actual 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 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. “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.
” 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.
¹²²
In compensation for this use of the objective form in the nominative position there occurs in vulgar American a use of the nominative form in the objective position, as in “She gave it to mother and
I
,” “She took all of
we
children” and “Anything she has is O.K. for
I
and Florrie,” all borrowed from Lardner.
¹²³
What lies at the bottom of this 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 the use of the nominative is chiefly 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
.”
¹²⁴
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 schoolmarm, seeking to impose an inelastic and illogical grammar upon a living speech, succeeds 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
” 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 apparently 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.
¹²⁵
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 Old English 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 vulgar American 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 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 know
theirselves
” Also, the emphatic
own
is often inserted between the pronoun and the noun, as in “Let every man save their
own
self.” In general the American vulgate makes very extensive use of the reflexive. It is constantly thrown in for good measure, as in “I overeat
myself
” and it is as constantly used singly, as in “
self
and wife.”

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
¹²⁶
of people” in Charters, and “I am not the kind of man that is always thinking about
their
record” and “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.
¹²⁷
His
, after a noun or pronoun connoting both sexes, often sounds inept, and
his-or-her
is intolerably clumsy. Thus the inaccurate plural is often substituted. The brothers Fowler have discovered “Anybody else who have only
themselves
in view” in Richardson, and “Everybody is discontented with
their
lot” in Disraeli, and Ruskin once wrote “If a customer wishes you to injure
their
foot.” I find two examples in a single paragraph of an article by Associate Justice George B. Ethridge of the Supreme Court of Mississippi: “We should keep it possible for anyone to correct
their
errors” and “No person can be happy in life if
they
”;
¹²⁸
and another in a war speech by Woodrow Wilson: “No man or woman can hesitate to give what
they
have.”
¹²⁹
In the lower reaches of the language the plural is used with complete innocence,
and such forms as “Everybody knows
their
way,” “Somebody has gotten
theirs
,” “Nobody could help
themselves
” and “A person ought never take what ain’t
theirn
” are common.