]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]        EMPHATICALLY YES!       [[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[ 
                          [By Sysop]                        (9/14/88)

     AtE subscriber Dr William S. Penn Jr. is director of a very 
enjoyable and instructive newsletter called SPELL ($15/year, renewal 
$10, monthly, 1527 Gilmore St., Mountain View, CA 94040), which 
collects dirty little pearls of bad grammar and spelling in the media.
     For example (From September 1988 issue):
     * "...doughnuts that have been laying all night." (Ad for Dunking 
Doughnuts)
     * "Our efforts have slayed a few dragons" (Ronald Reagan)
     * "Check the days you would like delivered on the calender 
below..." (Ad for Dakota Quality Bird Feed)
     * "...benefited the wealthy at the sake of the needy." (San 
Francisco Chronicle)
     * "What an opportunity for we as democrats..." (Politician's 
radio comment)

and many more, plus articles, explanations, etc.
     Now "an opportunity for we as democrats" is clearly wrong since 
the preposition FOR must be followed by the accusative, which in this 
case of a PERSONAL pronoun is US.
     But where I disagree with SPELL and practically all establishment 
English teachers is censuring the American Spectator (in the same 
issue) for the phrase
     "...two reporters were there: me and someone from..."
which should have been "I and someone...," evidently on the grounds 
that the two reporters are subjects in the nominative, but ME is the 
accusative.
     Accusative of the PERSONAL pronoun, that is; but who says the 
pronoun is personal? Many languages, including French, Latin and Czech, 
have EMPHATIC pronouns, as when Louis XIV said "L'etat, c'est MOI" -- 
"the State, that is ME (I? Myself?)." The non-emphatic, PERSONAL 
pronoun in French, which Louis could NOT have used, is JE.
     In English the (quasi)emphatic pronouns are formally the same as 
the reflexive ones (myself, yourself, ...), but where is it written 
that they are the only ones?
     When English absorbed thousands of words, phrases and idioms from 
French after the Norman Conquest, why should it not have absorbed its 
ways with emphatic pronouns, too? MOI can be used in the NOMINATIVE, 
and so can, I submit, the EMPHATIC pronoun ME (her, us, them).

     It's me, it's me, it's me o Lord, 
        an' I'm standing in the need of prayer,
     It's me, it's me, it's me o Lord, 
        [an' I'm in the emphatic layer...]

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