Between you and me

I wonder as I wander out under the sky,
How Jesus the Savior did come for to die,
For poor orn’ry people like you and like I,
I wonder as I wander, … out under the sky.

I love this song, but there’s one word that bothers me: the “I” in “like I.” Now, I try not to be a grammar cop, especially since being trained as a descriptivist (rather than a prescriptivist) in my English Language (linguistics of English) major. I don’t care if you say “less people” or “to boldly go” or whatever.

But “like I”? That’s just painful.

Granted, it had to fit the rhyme, I know. But like is a preposition here, and so it needs to take a pronoun in what’s called the accusative case by the Latinists, and the objective case by the non-Latinists. I is in the nominative/subjective case, which means it’s the form used as the subject of a verb. (”I love books.”) Me, on the other hand, is accusative/objective, and is used as the object of the verb, or in this case, as the object of the preposition like. You’d never say, “Bobby hit I,” for example. (And I don’t know why linguists always tend to use violent examples. ~sigh~) Or this: “He is going with I.”

But nowadays people are saying things like, “Me and Sally went to the store.” In a way it’s an abomination, wreaking all sorts of havoc on our case system, but then again we haven’t got much of one left and so I try not to cringe too much. Heck, I find myself saying it often enough.

So, what the song ought to say is, “like me.” Now, you could make a case that like is more of a conjunction here, and that it’s a contracted form of “like you are and like I am.” That’s the reasoning behind saying things like, “She’s taller than I.” (Than can be both a conjunction and a preposition.) There’s also the now-infamous “between you and I.” Same deal here: I should be in the accusative case — “between you and me” — since it’s the object of the preposition between. But people get caught up on the “x than I” and end up overcompensating in other areas of the language. It’s not such a big deal, I suppose.

In this case, however, “like I” sticks out like a shard of stained glass. I guess my training in Latin and Old English has made me rather sensitive to case usage, so perhaps in this area I’m not quite the descriptivist I’d like to be. :)

Ben, LOL:) I have a brother-in-law (who or that) used to send back family letters corrected in red ink. Everyone that dares to write my sister does so with a dictionary in hand. I love spell check!!! My sister doesn’t get many letters (, or ;) and her kids write so small that you wouldn’t know it if they made a mistake in grammar because you can’t read the tiny print anyway. I wonder if this post will have the same effect on your readers(. ! or ?)

I love to sing. My girls all have beautiful voices and mine is ok. I think that it would have been lovely but a friend in 5th grade told me that you couldn’t show your teeth when you sing. I tried but it didn’t work out. Consequently, I was the only kid in the 5th grade (who or that) was not in the choir. They had to include me in 6th grade and my spirit was so hurt when they told me to mouth the words that I really let them have it during the final performance. In 7th grade we were given two choices, 1) vocal music 2) instrumental music. I didn’t play an instrument. When the vocal music teacher announced that we would all have to sing a solo so she could find out where we were starting from, I headed for the back corner of the room in order to delay the humiliation for as long as possible. I am amazed that I didn’t take out a wall getting there.

Thank heaven that orchestra teacher came in and announced that he needed a viola player before it was my turn to sing. He asked if anyone knew how to play the viola and I raised my hand. I figured that it wouldn’t be nearly as humiliating to not know how to play an instrument as not knowing how to sing. I picked up the viola and imitated the girl sitting next to me and I taught myself how to play the viola out of sheer desperation. Because of my experience, all of my daughters play string instruments and several of my sisters and their daughters do too.

I actually hold the distinction of being the only person that I know (who or that) has been evicted from an apartment complex for singing. (I was imitating the opera singer who lived downstairs because she woke me up every morning.) I love to sing, but only to my children and grandchildren. It is amazing how much damage can be done to the spirit without anyone even realizing the deed was done.

I really enjoy blogging but it is kind of like singing so I would like to close this by letting you know that I am very self conscious about the (who/that) dilemma. Perhaps you could shed some light on that subject too.

Ben, I think you ascribe too much systematicity to language, and therefore expect it too much. For me, this sort of stylistic usage is welcome–especially in poetry!–as it makes language all the more interesting. It doesn’t grate on me at all. I also don’t think it’s used here purely for rhyme. I think the nominative case is capable of carrying more weight than the accusative–it gives the effect of greater focus, greater punch.

More importantly, “like you and like I” is not grammatically equivalent to saying something like “He hit I” or “Me like apples.” Rather, the pronoun “I” follows a coordinator as the second of two phrases making up the coordination “like you and like I.” It can’t be judged on purely the same grounds.

But imagine the line read like this:

“For poor orn’ry people like you are and like I am,”

Sounds fine, right? So why the aversion to the other version? It’s a conditioned reaction based an a narrow rule that you are taught to apply everywhere, even where it doesn’t apply. Now consider this phrase:

“I love the fact that she wears glasses.”

Here we have nominative “she” in the accusative position. But of course, it’s grammatical. Using “her” is unthinkable. In this case, the noun phrase “the fact that she wears glasses” is the actual object, and the word “she” being in the object position is just incidental to the sentence. The reason you don’t cringe at it is either (a) you’re educated enough in grammar to realize its valid use in this situation, or (b) it just sounds right. If (a), then recognize that there is pragmatic validity in the original usage above. If (b), then realize you are not always capable of explaining the underlying grammar of a given sentence, and thus refrain from passing judgment on a situation you understand incompletely.

Personally, I have no qualms with the honest and unintentional use of I in a coordinate phrase such as “I hope you’ll come to the movies with John and I sometime.” The reason why I avoid it myself both in speech and in writing is because of the preconceived notions of grammatical correctness that abound, and the disdain heaped with misplaced righteous indignance upon those who cross these notions.

None of this is to say I don’t believe that there is such a thing as incorrect grammar. Sure there is. But many of the longstanding rules are either arbitrary, superimposed on English from Latin with no logical reason, or just tools for dividing society into the haves and have-nots.

[Note: Some of my thinking is inspired by this Language Log post from December of last year.]

J: LOL, I’m really not as snarky about correct grammar as this post makes me seem. What really matters, in my opinion, is heart. If someone has heart in their writing, speaking with real feeling, then the mechanics don’t matter quite so much. (But at the same time, as an editor I do have to say that I very much appreciate pieces with impeccable spelling and grammar.) As for who v. that, I try to use who when referring to people (instead of that), but in reality I go with whatever sounds best. I guess it’s the poet in me. Only in very rare cases do I really notice that someone’s used that where they should have used a who. I wouldn’t worry about it, honestly.

Rikker: Apparently even in spite of my claim to be a descriptivist, I’ve allowed my old prescriptivist front and center stage here. ~sigh~ :) I suppose it’s the Latin student in me that wants things cookie-cuttered as much as possible, with no incorrect case usage. And I do agree that grammar can and should be bent in poetry.

If you go back and check the second-to-last paragraph of the post, by the way, you’ll see that I actually did mention the coordination bit. (Though for some reason I said like was used as a conjunction in that case. It’s not, and now I’m not entirely sure what it would be.) I still think that like in the song is a preposition, however. :P

As for the “I love the fact that she wears glasses,” the she isn’t in the accusative position at all. As you said yourself, the noun phrase “that fact that she wears glasses” is the object of “I love,” and the second that introduces a subordinate clause, of which she is the subject. We don’t cringe because there’s no reason to cringe. A better example would be, “I love the fact that her wears glasses.” Cringe away. ;)

When I said it was in the accusative position, I was referring simply the its location in the accusative position as a part of the larger noun phrase. [I love [the fact that [she wears glasses]]]. This is, of course, easy to analyze correctly, which was part of the point. Superficially it’s incorrect on one level (i.e. you have the word “she” coming after the verb “love”), but it’s easily resolved.

While I do think you’re more thoughtful that most, it seems to me that self-styled grammarians tend to assume something is wrong because it’s not cut-and-dried, so according to their simplistic understanding of grammar (and probably because of the influence of Latin, too :P), they think it’s wrong. And there’s some validity to that. Insofar as they know, x breaks rule y.

But that’s why descriptivism is important, *and* why it’s not the same thing as saying “hey, every word is special, you can put them in whatever order you want, because you’re a beautiful butterfly who can do no wrong.” It’s more like “everyone speaks, but not everyone studies grammar, so let’s look at the way people speak in the real world, reserve judgment on it, and look for common patterns in the way people really speak (even when those patterns go against the grain of 19th century grammar books).”

I decided to come back to this topic because I watched a TV show recently (I’ve already forgotten which) and heard the phrase (at a memorial for someone who had died), “No one will ever forget him. Certainly not I.” Naturally, I thought of posting it here immediately, because it stuck out to me as rather elegant (ไพเราะ, if you will ;P). Which then made me think, hey–what about when someone asks to speak to you on the phone, how you’re “supposed” to respond with “this is (s)he”?–better see what Ben thinks about it.

Have at.

One more thing, Ben.

Don’t forget that Latin is so prescribable (you like that word?) only because there are have been NO NATIVE SPEAKERS for a long ol’ time. I say this without any expertise in (or particular exposure to) Latin, but in my thinking, it has become an essentially artificial language, not unlike Esperanto or COBOL. Upon hearing the Latin of today’s classrooms, the historic inhabitants of the town of Latium would likely say, “It’s Greek to me.” :)

The point with “like I” (assuming like is a preposition) didn’t come about with the 19th century Latin-inspired grammarians, actually; we had cases in Old English since way back when, and those inflections were how you would tell what function a word was serving in a sentence, since word order was more flexible. For example, “se nama” is the nominative form of “the name,” whereas “hine naman” is the accusative form. (I’ve included the definite article here for illustration, but its absence wouldn’t change the inflection.)

Whether or not we use the wrong cases today is another matter, of course, but historically this has little to do with Latin. (Grammar rules that do have to do with Latin include the split infinitive and not ending sentences with a preposition.)

The use of the nominative in sentences like your example — “Certainly not I” — is indeed more elegant and proper. And it has its place.

And now for the telephone example. In “This is he,” the is is a copula (a “to be” verb), in effect saying that the “object” (he) is referring to the same thing as the subject (this). (The same thing happens with linking verbs — “She looks nice” has nice as the subject complement, redefining the subject.)

Since this is the subject and thus in the nominative case, the rule follows that he should also be in the nominative case. This is how it works in Latin, at any rate. At the moment I can’t remember if Old English does the same… Anyway, the reason people say “This is me” is that they’re used to finding an accusative form after the verb.

And what do I say? “‘Tis I.”

Just kidding. When someone asks, “Is Ben there?” I respond with, “Hey, how’s it going?” Easy way to avoid the whole issue. :)

As for Latin being prescribable because it’s dead, well, I guess you have a point. :) (Another reason the historical inhabitants would have issues with our Latin of today is that the pronunciation is reconstructed, but that’s for another post… :))