[B-Greek] What is it between you and I?
Cherney,Kenneth
cherneyk at wls.wels.net
Thu Jul 3 08:38:24 EDT 2008
Hypercorrection is one reason that persons tend to reject "you and me" even when it's correct. But another reason is the way that they perceive the hierarchy within the prepositional phrase. Mentally they join the two objects ("you and I") first; then they link the resulting combination to the preposition. If they linked each object to the preposition individually they could easily see that "for I" or "between I" is ungrammatical, but they don't.
If the above is unclear, draw a tree diagram. It will make perfect sense.
K. Cherney
________________________________
From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org on behalf of David McKay
Sent: Wed 7/2/2008 9:06 PM
To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] What is it between you and I?
I hope I won't get shot for beginning and continuing this non-Greek
discussion.
I think that the use of "I" for "me" may have originally been because people
were often told to say "I" and not "me" but I don't think this is the reason
that young people [and older people] say "between you and I" today.
When I have attempted to discuss this with people, I have been told that
"you and me" is always wrong. It now sounds odd to people. And it was a 59
year old who told me this.
David McKay
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