I’m not a prescriptivist, there’s no denying that language evolves. In fact this might not have occurred if not for prescriptivist meddling in the first place. Notice that this phenomenon doesn’t happen when “I/me” is the sole subject of a sentence. I suspect overcorrection by teachers who insist on the “them and me” rule without explaining the nuance to subject vs object influenced a lot of us. I remember teachers heavily correcting instances of “me and so-and-so” to “so-and-so and I,” but it wasn’t clarified that it’s only for the subject of the sentence. Now we’re flooded with “it’s for so-and-so and I” perhaps because people got trained out of using “me and so-and-so,” even when “me” is the grammatically accurate pronoun to use sometimes.
It’s interesting because pronouns are the only trace of noun case that English has left, which makes me wonder how long it will take for even that to ebb away. We already see people misunderstanding “whom,” though I imagine that word’s on its last legs anyway. Word order is the gold standard for English as far as subject vs object is involved, and “Who is it for?” already feels more natural than “Whom is it for?” Perhaps this will become the case for “I/me” someday?
You make a number of interesting observations, and you’re right that “Who is it for” does feel more natural, despite being the object of that sentence.
Perhaps you’re correct that some teachers taught English grammar poorly, and insisted on specific words without explaining the underlying grammar, and perhaps that failure has led to people using the language incorrectly, which has then snowballed such errors into common usage.
Another word I often see poorly used is the reflexive pronoun ‘myself’, which should be used as the object when the subject and object of the sentence both refer to the person who is speaking, as in “I gave myself a pen”, but I know at least three people who commonly misuse it with a sentence like “Make a decision and get back to myself”, which is just hopelessly wrong and sounds terrible, but I think it may be the same issue you described where people have never had it explained to them what the correct usage is, and end up mistakenly thinking that it sounds more “correct” to say the word myself in place of the word me. Credit to Austin Power’s deliberate blunder Allow myself to introduce myself
Yeah, the “for x and I” is definitely a hypercorrection. But I don’t think the original “me and x” is the result of prescriptivism - I’m not sure what correction would cause it. It’s interesting because French has a very similar phenomenon with its emphatic pronouns (e.g. “Ma mère et moi, nous faisons…” “My mother and me, we do…”) In any case, it would be interesting to see how things develop over the next few hundred years
I’m not a prescriptivist, there’s no denying that language evolves. In fact this might not have occurred if not for prescriptivist meddling in the first place. Notice that this phenomenon doesn’t happen when “I/me” is the sole subject of a sentence. I suspect overcorrection by teachers who insist on the “them and me” rule without explaining the nuance to subject vs object influenced a lot of us. I remember teachers heavily correcting instances of “me and so-and-so” to “so-and-so and I,” but it wasn’t clarified that it’s only for the subject of the sentence. Now we’re flooded with “it’s for so-and-so and I” perhaps because people got trained out of using “me and so-and-so,” even when “me” is the grammatically accurate pronoun to use sometimes.
It’s interesting because pronouns are the only trace of noun case that English has left, which makes me wonder how long it will take for even that to ebb away. We already see people misunderstanding “whom,” though I imagine that word’s on its last legs anyway. Word order is the gold standard for English as far as subject vs object is involved, and “Who is it for?” already feels more natural than “Whom is it for?” Perhaps this will become the case for “I/me” someday?
You make a number of interesting observations, and you’re right that “Who is it for” does feel more natural, despite being the object of that sentence.
Perhaps you’re correct that some teachers taught English grammar poorly, and insisted on specific words without explaining the underlying grammar, and perhaps that failure has led to people using the language incorrectly, which has then snowballed such errors into common usage.
Another word I often see poorly used is the reflexive pronoun ‘myself’, which should be used as the object when the subject and object of the sentence both refer to the person who is speaking, as in “I gave myself a pen”, but I know at least three people who commonly misuse it with a sentence like “Make a decision and get back to myself”, which is just hopelessly wrong and sounds terrible, but I think it may be the same issue you described where people have never had it explained to them what the correct usage is, and end up mistakenly thinking that it sounds more “correct” to say the word myself in place of the word me. Credit to Austin Power’s deliberate blunder Allow myself to introduce myself
Yeah, the “for x and I” is definitely a hypercorrection. But I don’t think the original “me and x” is the result of prescriptivism - I’m not sure what correction would cause it. It’s interesting because French has a very similar phenomenon with its emphatic pronouns (e.g. “Ma mère et moi, nous faisons…” “My mother and me, we do…”) In any case, it would be interesting to see how things develop over the next few hundred years