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Native ’ungrammatical’ phrases | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Giordano Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7174 days ago 213 posts - 218 votes  3 sounds Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Cantonese, Greek | Message 33 of 69 07 September 2005 at 5:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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"It is I" is not a correct English phrase. I don't know why everyone thinks it is. I is a pronoun, whereas me is the object of a verb.
In the sentence "It is me", "it" is the pronoun, "is" is the predicate/verb, and "me" is the object of the verb "is". It's that simple. There was a song a summer or two ago called "Baby it's I", and that phrase was repeated over and over again. Grammarians were outraged. Edited by Giordano on 07 September 2005 at 5:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 7104 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes 2 sounds | Message 34 of 69 07 September 2005 at 7:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you for explaining this. :) I wasn't buying the whole "It's I" thing.
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| victor Tetraglot Moderator United States Joined 7318 days ago 1098 posts - 1056 votes 6 sounds Speaks: Cantonese*, English, FrenchC1, Mandarin Studies: Spanish Personal Language Map | Message 35 of 69 07 September 2005 at 7:38pm | IP Logged | ||
What grammarians are you talking about? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7103 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 36 of 69 08 September 2005 at 2:43am | IP Logged | ||
I'm afraid that this is simply incorrect. For a start me is as much a pronoun as I - one is an object pronoun and the other a subject pronoun. The issue in question here is that a verb such as "to be" is an example in English of what is known as a copulative or linking verb. As such it does not take an object but a complement. Prescriptive grammarians will state that it should take a subject complement because and I quote: Unlike object complements, subject complements are not affected by the action of the verb, and they describe or explain the subject. In this case, I is not affected by the action of the verb is, and it specifies exactly who the subject It is. The subject complement therefore takes the subjective case. Usually, this makes no difference in the sentence because English nouns no longer distinguish between subjective and objective case. But English pronouns make the distinction, and the subject complement takes I instead of me. It's I is sounds strange to many English speakers, but is considered correct by prescriptivists. So the issue here is that traditional grammar states that it should take a subject complement but usage is transitioning towards an object complement in some but not all cases. Consider the following phrase: Who are they? - this is the verb "to be" followed by a subject complement because nobody is going to argue that it should be "who are them?". It is also reasonable and you will hear "It is I who...". My issue with this originally is that being a grammarian (albeit an amateur one) of a descriptive nature I don't see the use of object complements as ungrammatical since they reflect how the language is rather than how some would like it to be. Andy. Edited by Andy E on 08 September 2005 at 3:16am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7376 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 37 of 69 08 September 2005 at 5:57am | IP Logged | ||
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Andy, thank you for this most detailed and precise explanation! It is true that in many languages we usually fail to recognize what in others is called 'Accusative' and 'Nominative' cases since there are almost no differences in most cases.
If we had a giant ear that could record every single utterance made in English in the 'It is I' situation, we would probably come to a bimodal distribution with 'It's me' as the most frequent phrase and 'It is I' as the second. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7103 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 38 of 69 08 September 2005 at 7:09am | IP Logged | ||
Getting some frequency figures that reflect this should be possible via one of the English Language Corpora sites. Unfortunately, I cannot seem to get onto the Collins COBUILD site at all at the moment...it keeps timing out :¬(. If anyone knows of any other sites let us know. Andy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JWC Groupie United States Joined 7098 days ago 69 posts - 107 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 39 of 69 11 September 2005 at 7:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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Andy referred to "copulative" and "linking" verbs. A way I have heard American grammarians (teaching Latin and Greek) describe a phrase such as "It is I" is to call it "predicate" construction. The predicate renames or adds information about the subject, without being the object of a transitive verb (although copulative is certainly correct).
Thus, "I am tired, "He is the doctor," are all A=B phrases, with B simply renaming or adding information about the subject. What is really going on with "It is I" versus "It is me" is the tension between an artificial (but consistent) grammatical construction and a natural language pattern similar to the tonic in French. Thus, in French one would say, "C'est moi", not "C'est je." Je is the subject form of the pronoun for "I", while moi is a tonic used for emphasis or as an indirect pronoun. We have a uniformly used emphatic pronoun form (the direct object pronoun form) when people are not writing in an academic context or trying to sound educated. For example, "It's me" "It's us" "It's them"--not "It is I" "It is we" "It is they." This brings up the idea that there is "good" colloquial English that should and one day will trump current artificial grammatical constructs that are purportedly proper, while other lapses in grammar are simply corruption in the language do to dumbed down educational techniques in the U.S. The problem with "artificial" grammar (as opposed to proper grammar that is natural) is that it typically attempts to graft Latin constructs onto the English language. A few examples: 1. ending sentences with prepositions: In Latin, prepositional phrases never place the preposition at the end of the sentence. But this is quite natural in English and presents no problems with clarity (and sometimes requires fewer syllables to convey the same meaning.) Colloquial: "What are you talking about." That does not in any sense sound ignorant to a native English speaker. Now consider the strict application of a Latin prepositional construction (purportedly correct): "About what are you talking" That sounds awkward and artificial. It reminds me of the humorous remark attributed to a famous politician (Churchill, Andy?), which goes somethign like this: "Bad grammar is something up with which we shall not put." That awkward gramatical construction avoids ending a sentence with a preposition. The joke is that "Bad grammar is something we shall not put up with" sounds much more natural. (Note: most Americans today would use "will" instead of "shall" for the future construction). 2. Spliting compound verb forms: a. split infinitive: in Latin, one could never split an infinite because that construction is just one word. For example, "amare" as the infinitive (i.e., "to love") form of amo, the verb that means "love" in Latin. Colloquial English frequently puts an adverb in between "to" and the verb when forming an infinitive construction. The most famous example I can think of in modern media is the line from the introduction to the Star Trek TV series: "To boldly go where no man has gone before." Prim Latin-influenced grammarians frown on this, because it splits the infinitive instead of treating the construction as one word (like a Latin infinitive). Captain Kirk should have said, "To go boldly where no man has gone before." (Or perhaps in line with Churchill, see above, "To go boldly where no man before has gone", to have an awkard and unnatural but proper phrase.) Similarly, grammarians frown on split compounds such as the perfect tense in English (i.e., "have" + past tense verb form). "I have often thought of travelling to France" violates this rule, and so one would have to say "I often have thought of ..." or "I have thought of travelling to France often" to satisfy the grammarians. As an attorney, I try to use educated English whenever possible in briefs submitted to our courts. Although I generally avoid split infinitives and split perfect tense verbs, I sometimes have to concede defeat and avoid the grammatically proper phrase to avoid sounding pretentious and stilted. --jwc 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7376 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 40 of 69 12 September 2005 at 12:47am | IP Logged | ||
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Very complete and precise explanation, thanks JWC!
Yesterday I heard on TV a vulgar but rather common mispronunciation of the French word expliquer, usually pronounced ehkspleeke, but in this case the anchorman said ehssplike. It does not sound very smart but I guess a foreigner must learn to recognize such pronunciations. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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