Quote:Interesting that you should equate generally accepted standard useage as pedantry, JTT. By that standard, virtually all rules can be ignored, dismissed as mere pedantry, and consigned to the dustbin of archaic vernacular. It is, I think, quite irrelevant what the linguistic lineage of a particular grammatical rule may be -- French, German, Latin or even Celtic. The relevant point is that it is a rule which has stood the test of time rather well.
No, Andrew, the point is,
"Consider the possibility that English grammar has been misanalysed for centuries because of grammarians' accepting fundamentally flawed assumptions about grammar and, not least, because of a flawed view of the history of English; and that these failings have resulted in a huge disconnect between English grammars and the genius of the English that really exists among educated native-speakers."
The rule that I suspect you're referring to, [it is I] is not at all standard. It never was standard. It was written by some folks who mistakenly applied rules of Latin to English, something that you state is "quite irrelevant".
Both [it is I] and [it is me] exist in English, have for a good long time. One is more formal, Piffka's choice [the former] but that doesn't make the other wrong. What's wrong is touting rules that never were just because they have some history. "flat world" had a history too.
Quote:Certainly, language is an evolving phoenomenon and what our grandparents may have considered improper is quite accepted today. I still remember being told in school that one should never end a sentence with a preposition. When I wanted to know why, the teacher had no adequate explanation. That proscription has long gone out of style. It was a silly rule, with no logical justification. This is not the case with the me:I, him:he, them:they etc. rule. It simply makes good sense to the Anglo-Saxon ear.
For someone who demands and maintains such high standards of proof, you have certainly come up with a doozer, Andrew; "It simply makes good sense to the Anglo-Saxon ear".
Quote:There is no formal declension of nouns and pronouns in English as there is in most other Indo-European languages. But the two simple cases of Nominative and Objective are well-established. And, again, the distinction has stood the test of time well. I can see no discernible reason for allowing a divergence from the rule now. It is a concession to laziness on the part of learners, no more, no less.
Oh, it has, has it? How is it that we use 'you' for both singular and plural. And horrors of horror, we use the plural verb 'are' with singular 'you'.
As the linguist, John Lawler says, English has, like a snake, been shedding case for centuries.
In order to find discernible reasons you have to check a bit further than believing things your grade school grammar teacher told you. They and your grandparents, parents, now you, were all fed the same old lies. Most of these bits of folklore go back a ways.
