"That's an interesting question, indeed, not only for you and I": a (non-systematic) fluctuation of personal pronoun forms

Vol.37,No.1(2011)

Ela Krejčová

https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2011-1-4

Stable URL (handle):
http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/118122

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Abstract
This article deals with the fluctuation of subjective and objective pronominal forms in a specific type of constructions, namely in coordinated phrases. The analysis will demonstrate that the behaviour of the first person singular pronoun goes against all the general trends in the usage of pronominal forms. Subsequently, alternative approaches towards the idiosyncrasies of the first person singular pronoun will be presented. The analysis is based on the data taken from the Corpus of Contemporary American English and from surveys distributed among 209 native speakers of American English, from the age of 18 up to the age of 75. The data from both sources show that there is no systemic fluctuation in the environment of postverbal coordinated phrases as the variation between the two case forms does not affect the whole paradigm of personal pronouns, and is not induced proportionally after the analyzed heading prepositions.

Keywords:
subjective and objective pronoun forms; coordinated phrases; case variation; the modesty principle; fossilization

Pages:
63–78
References

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