Underlying pronoun? I vs. Me

I forgot where (maybe in a Linguistics class) I had heard that "me" tends to be the "underlying" form of the first person in English. I'm almost certain "underlying pronoun" would not be the correct term, but nevertheless, English tends to use "me" where most other languages would use "I." For example, "that's me" as opposed to German "das bin ich." Or when answering the telephone "it's me" while German is "Ich bin's."

Is this something English picked up from French (for example, "c'est moi") or is it a peculiarity that English has developed on its own?

The reason I ask is because one of my graduate student colleagues commented that one of my pictures on Facebook (StudiVZ/QG, Studentface, Xiaonei, vKontakte, etc. are based on Facebook) contains the caption "my friends and me" and he said that it should be "my friends and I" which, for a picture caption, seems a little hypercorrective in the same since of "that's me" being corrected by someone who would say "that's I."

Good question, as a English learner I always found sentences like these kind of strange: It is me; instead of It is I. Me is supposed to be preceded by a preposition, but this is not the case.

>>Is this something English picked up from French (for example, "c'est moi") or is it a peculiarity that English has developed on its own?<<

This is an innovation that occurred long after Old Norman influence on Middle English and like; remember that in Middle English present day "It is me" would have been "(H)it am I". Also, "I" and "me" coexisted in this sort of role since the Early New English period, and only recently has "me" completely replaced "I" in these sorts of cases.

>>The reason I ask is because one of my graduate student colleagues commented that one of my pictures on Facebook (StudiVZ/QG, Studentface, Xiaonei, vKontakte, etc. are based on Facebook) contains the caption "my friends and me" and he said that it should be "my friends and I" which, for a picture caption, seems a little hypercorrective in the same since of "that's me" being corrected by someone who would say "that's I."<<

"My friends and I" is a formal construction promulgated by prescriptivists a couple to few centuries back. However, if one is to go with "me" here, it would be better to say "me and my friends", which much better reflects actual English usage patterns than "my friends and me" (which sounds rather akward).

As for the underlying form of "I"/"me", I would say that in English today that would be the oblique case form "me". The matter is that the nominative case form "I" is actually only obligatory in cases where it is a single subject outside any sort of coordinate construnction and to vocative usages. In all other positions "me" may be used, even in subjects (as in "me and my friends"), and is often mandatory (as in "It is me" in present-day spoken English when not spoken by pompous asses).

lol thanks Travis. That was really helpful and I liked the bit about the pompous asses at the end.

I'm not sure if I fully understand what you mean by "vocative usages" though. Do you mean something like emphatic usage? How would the vocative come into play here?

>>I'm not sure if I fully understand what you mean by "vocative usages" though. Do you mean something like emphatic usage? How would the vocative come into play here?<<

Ignore my comment about vocative usages, as what I was thinking of is actually just an emphatic subject of sorts...

I think "My friends and I" would be incorrect in this case. If you only had yourself, then you would write "Me", not "I". That doesn't change merely because you add other people. I agree that "Me and my friends" would probably be better, but I don't think it's a big issue.

- Kef

It's only a big issue because I have a shirt that says "Good Grammar is Hot" and my friend's trying to call me out on it saying that I don't have good grammar... this is a HUGE deal lol

I think that the use of 'me' in "It's me" stems from analogy with other verbs like "He hit me"/"He sees me", being that the position (regardless of whether the verb is equative, like 'be') of 'me' comes after the verb.

Also, "It's I/It is I" sounds strange because there appears like there are two nominatives in the sentence, again, on opposite sides of the verb, and only one naturally agrees with the verb.

>>Also, "It's I/It is I" sounds strange because there appears like there are two nominatives in the sentence, again, on opposite sides of the verb, and only one naturally agrees with the verb<<

True, but why, in that case does nothing of the sort happen in German? Of course German is a bit different in this case in that the verb has to agree with the 'I' i.e. 'Ich bin es' and not 'Es ist ich'. But still German never breaks the rules regarding who/what is the natural subject or object of the sentence.

I don't think -It's I- sounds strange. Many people answer the phone saying:
I would like to talk to Vanessa.
-This is she.

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I've been meaning to talk about the phrase between you and I for a while, but when I heard that Hillary Clinton had chosen the song “You and I” by Celine Dion for her campaign theme song, I knew it was finally the right time to tackle this topic!

That's because Celine Dion's song “You and I” is grammatically correct, whereas the Jessica Simpson song “Between You and I” is incorrect.

First the basics: the words you, I, and me are all pronouns. They stand in for nouns like Hillary, Jessica, and Grammar Girl.

Pronouns can be subjects, objects, or possessive. I've talked about this before—the subject of a sentence is the agent taking action, and the object is the thing or person being acted upon. If I say, “I love you,” I am the subject (the one doing the loving), and you are the object (the target of my love and the object of my affection).

A possessive pronoun shows that the thing or person possesses something. I won't talk about possessive pronouns anymore today, because they aren't relevant to the topic.

This next part you just kind of have to know. If you've been speaking English for a long time, you probably know it whether you think you do or not, and if you are learning English you just have to memorize it.

I is a subject pronoun, and me is an object pronoun.

The proper sentence is I love you, not Me love you. You use I because the pronoun is the subject of the sentence, and I is the subjective pronoun. And if you've been speaking English your whole life, your ear quickly picks up the difference between right and wrong. I play the marimbas versus Me play the marimbas.

Squiggly loves me is the proper sentence, not Squiggly loves I. I'm the target of Squiggly's love, so I'm in the object position in that sentence, and the objective pronoun is me. Again, in most cases your ear should pick up the difference. He gave the marimbas to me versus He gave the marimbas to I.

The reason it gets a little tricky when you combine I and me with you is that you is both a subjective and an objective pronoun. It's one of those confusing things that just isn't fair. Whether it is in the subject or the object position, you still use the word you. You love Squiggly and Squiggly loves you. They are both correct.

Here's why the song title “You and I” is correct: The title comes from the line You and I were meant to fly. In that line, you and I are both in the subject case. We're taking action—flying.

That seems pretty straightforward. So now we can move on to “Between You and I” and figure out why it's wrong.

Between is a preposition, just as on, above, over, and of are prepositions. Because prepositions usually either describe a relationship, or show possession, they don’t act alone; they often answer questions like Where? and When? For example, if I said, “Keep that secret between you and me,” between describes where the secret is to be kept. If I said, “I'll tell you the secret on July 5,” on describes when the secret will be revealed.

So, instead of acting alone, prepositions are part of prepositional phrases. In those example sentences, between you and me and on July 5 are prepositional phrases. And it's just a rule that pronouns following prepositions in those phrases are always in the objective case (1). When you're using the objective case, the correct pronoun is me, so the correct prepositional phrase is between you and me.

Most grammarians are sympathetic to people who say between you and I because it's considered a hypercorrection. The theory is that people have been so traumatized by being corrected when they say things such as Ashley and me went to the mall instead of Ashley and I went to the mall that they incorrectly correct between you and me to between you and I (2, 3, 4). I don't have anything against Jessica Simpson. I know I indirectly picked on her last week too because she was in the video I posted on the blog showing George Bush saying, “nuclear power pants.” But if remembering that her song “Between You and I” is wrong helps you remember the rule, then she's done a service to the world.

That's all.
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http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/between-you-and-me.aspx

http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~zwicky/Grano.finalthesis.pdf

“Me and her” meets “he and I”:
Case, person, and linear ordering in English coordinated pronouns
by
Thomas Grano
Honors Thesis
Submitted to the Linguistics Department Honors Program
Stanford University, School of Humanities and Sciences
May 15, 2006

>>“Me and her” meets “he and I”:
Case, person, and linear ordering in English coordinated pronouns
by
Thomas Grano<<

Wow, if you ignore the presciptivist view and look at the actual usage, it's actually pretty complicated :O

This brings to light a problem developing in English: mandatory use of "you and I" regardless of whether it is nominative or objective case.

The issue stems from 2 things:

1). 'you' takes the same form in both cases, making it dependent solely on the first person to differentiate case form (in this example with you and I)

2). because in school as children (at least here in the US) teachers for decades have stresses "You and I". Confusion has obviously arisen from the stressing of this. My dad is a prime example. He always uses "You and I", even in the object case, like Jessica Simpson's song. When I attempt to correct him, he says that "It's always 'you and I'" and the attempt fails...(I'm not anal enough to push through his frustration. I just let it go)

I too remember the third grade (US) where teachers taught us 'you and I' and 'you and me', but the stress seemed to always fall on 'you and I'--"It's always 'you and I'". Well, come to realize, the stress was not on the clitic 'you and I', ***the stress was intended to be placed upon the second person FIRST...***
Confusion arises when we don't realize this and our minds perceive that what the teachers are telling us is that 'you and I' and 'you and me' are always to be "you and I". (My dad just cannot understand this...he's been convinced for so long)

So what we're seeing today is the rampant result of this...and God help us if in a song, "you and I" happen to rhyme better than "you and me"...you know what will happen.

<<Wow, if you ignore the presciptivist view and look at the actual usage, it's actually pretty complicated :O >>

This is an example of prescriptivism gone awry