Language historians are particularly amused at the rules that
were imposed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Stanford’s Prof. Seth Lerer has a interesting and informative electronic
course offered by the Teaching Company which is on the History of the English
Language that I highly recommend. Lerer suggests that a certain class of
English gentlemen, with time on their hands, and seeing certain segments of the
underclass getting a bit out of hand and the genteel class needed a way to separate
themselves. They also had a dozen or more pieces of silverware on the table to
baffle the pretenders.
http://www.teach12.com/ttcx/coursedesclong2.aspx?cid=800&id=800&d=History+of+the+English+Language&pc=Literature%20and%20English%20Language
The rules of a language are determined by usage. Living language
is fluid and if the usage fails to commentate meaning then that usage, in a
sort of Darwinian sense, dies. I went to grade school in the 40’s and was
beat over the head about things like using the word “contact” as a
verb. “I’ll contact you tomorrow.” Horrors!
I still remember being corrected in high school of writing “icy
roads increase stopping distances” with “stopping distances are
increased on icy roads.” To this day I am still baffled. It had
something to do with icy roads being unable to increase anything – and something
about transitive and intransitive. Either version of the phrase is quite
meaningful and I doubt anyone would be called on it today except possibly here.
The topic has run its course and should never have been broached
in the first place.
--Dick Sullivan
From: Bob and Carla
[mailto:bb333@earthlink.net]
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2007 8:02 PM
To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
Subject: Re: Digital Negatives & PT/PD / language & Grammar
Police
After all the nominative
vocative consideration, It's still a poetic issue in this case......
(I / sky). Not to mention the evening sky being likened to an etherised
patient.
Bob
On Jan 10, 2007, at 8:43 PM, Dave Soemarko wrote:
But I don't think the two are
of the same grammatical sense.
He could have said "let us go, you and me," and that would be correct
too, but in that case, the "you and me" would be the object of the
verb "let," and the sentence would mean "let us, you and me,
go."
But he said, "let us go, you and I." This is also grammatically
correct but in a different way. Grammatically the "you and I" is not
the object but the addressee. That's why I said it was in vocative case.
Logically or pratically the two sentences might mean the same thing, but
grammatically they are different.
Dave S
From: Richard Sullivan [mailto:richsul@earthlink.net]
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2007 7:08 PM
To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
Subject: RE: Digital Negatives & PT/PD / language & Grammar
Police
From a New Yawk Times Book Review 1984
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E1DC163BF934A15752C0A962948260
>>Finally, one tends to lick past the whimsical flavor of the examples to
the marrow of their structure. ''Let's you and me get together
and do away with some of the possibilities,'' she writes to illustrate a
correct case of pronouns in apposition to another pronoun. How's that again:
''Let's you and me ''? Right: '' You and me are in apposition
with 's , which equals us , the object of let. '' This
makes perfect sense. Let you and me get together and do away with
some of the possibilities.
But hold on! This means that one of the great writers of the 20th century
committed a grammatical blunder in one of his most famous poems. ''Let us go
then, you and I,'' reads the first line of T. S. Eliot's ''Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock.'' ''When the evening is spread out against the sky/ Like a
patient etherised upon a table.'' Oh, well, it just goes to show that all of us
writers make our share of grammatical errors. Me and T. S. Eliot! T. S. Eliot
and I. <<