# Between you and I, what's up with the misuse of "I"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 2, 2016, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/between-you-and-i-whats-up-with-the-misuse-of-i/764748 "2016-09-02T01:13:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2016, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/between-you-and-i-whats-up-with-the-misuse-of-i/764748/101 "2016-09-04T21:10:02Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Much has been made of the fact that humans possess the FOXP2 gene which is associated with the language acquisition skills you describe. Know who else has the FOXP2 gene? Dogs. And recent research has shown that dogs process language in a much more sophisticated way than was once believed. MRI brain scans show that dogs process intonations with the right hemisphere of the brain but the actual words being spoken are processed by the left hemisphere, just as in humans, so in a real sense they understand spoken words and not just the way we intone them, as was once widely believed. I mostly just mention this because I love dogs and think we sometimes underestimate their intelligence, but I’m also trying to get across the idea that there’s much more to human language than anything that is unconsciously learned or genetically enabled. Granted, however, that dogs have no sense of grammar and that this is a skill that humans seem uniquely equipped to acquire. > [Dogs understand both words and intonation of human speech | Neuroscience | The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/aug/30/dogs-understand-both-words-and-intonation-of-human-speech) Just to be clear, all mammals have a FOXP2 gene (as do some non-mammals). The Human version, though, codes for some different proteins than the corresponding gene in other species, including chimps and also dogs. The study you are quoting did not deal with that gene, but with brain activity. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2016, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/between-you-and-i-whats-up-with-the-misuse-of-i/764748/102 "2016-09-04T22:24:02Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > _ **begs** _ the question Wrong! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2016, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/between-you-and-i-whats-up-with-the-misuse-of-i/764748/103 "2016-09-04T22:27:03Z")
And thus the gauntlet is thrown. ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2016, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/between-you-and-i-whats-up-with-the-misuse-of-i/764748/104 "2016-09-05T00:29:33Z")
I know you’re just jokily objecting (in response to being egged on to do just that), but of course “begs the question” can be used in multiple ways in English. And one of those ways is to describe a situation which just BEGS for a certain QUESTION to be considered. Why not? This is in no conflict with the same words also being usable in different ways. Most words and phrases allow for deployment in a multitude of senses. Language! [I’m actually not sure which reading Riemann intended, but that’s fine too; ambiguity is a normal, un-purgeable, non-catastrophic element of natural language] ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2016, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/between-you-and-i-whats-up-with-the-misuse-of-i/764748/105 "2016-09-05T00:46:38Z")
Using “begs the question” in its “correct” sense was born of a rather ugly calque to begin with, and has no redeeming qualities among people who value intelligibility and clarity in language. Its only use is as a shibboleth, to separate the people who received some otherwise worthless tidbits from those who did not, and to make the less fortunate of the social strivers feel nervous and inadequate to the task of using their own native tongue. It’s _pars pro toto_ for this whole mess, really: Using language as a method of social exclusion by inventing nonsensical pseudo-rules that only the Valuable People have a chance to learn, to reinforce everyone else’s out-group status and to make conversations into minefields where one false step opens you up to endless mockery for violating some “rule” which didn’t exist more than two generations ago and was an artificial imposition from day one. The classism is on the surface and, as [**Riemann** ’s wonderful link](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=5161) shows, the racism is a millimeter down and a mile thick. The fact people seem to be abandoning the worst of this nonsense should be cause for dancing in the streets. The glorious day when these false rules are all relegated to dusty books cannot come soon enough. ---
**Author:** ![ToughLife](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8797f3/32.png) [@ToughLife](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ToughLife)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2016, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/between-you-and-i-whats-up-with-the-misuse-of-i/764748/106 "2016-09-05T00:51:07Z")
So the statement (from Riemann’s link) _“She has to be the most, ignorant, ghetto, uneducated, lazy, fat, gross, arrogant, stupid, confrontation [sic] Black bitch I’ve ever seen in my fucking life.”_ was definitely wrong because, according to Riemann’s other link, it should **of** been written as - the most ignorant,stupid,arrogant,gross,fat,Black,ghetto bitch\* … in this order … more or less. Right ? (and no, “ **of** ”, here, was not a typo or mistake, it’s just my “style” or my “dialect” if you wish) 😉 **wolfpup** you are trying to bend over backwards to please your opponents in this discussion. Your position here is much more solid that they would like you to admit. So don’t give up easily, there are a lot of people on your side of the argument. People often use incorrect language not because of their “dialect” or “style”… my ass, but because they don’t know any better. It’s one thing to jump a red light because you are in a hurry and it’s quite another to do the same because you don’t know that Red means Stop. ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2016, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/between-you-and-i-whats-up-with-the-misuse-of-i/764748/107 "2016-09-05T02:52:48Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > The fact people seem to be abandoning the worst of this nonsense should be cause for dancing in the streets. The glorious day when these false rules are all relegated to dusty books cannot come soon enough. That would be wonderful news! What are you referring to when you say people are already abandoning the worst of this nonsense? ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2016, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/between-you-and-i-whats-up-with-the-misuse-of-i/764748/108 "2016-09-05T03:14:55Z")
> [@Indistinguishable](#): > > That would be wonderful news! What are you referring to when you say people are already abandoning the worst of this nonsense? Well, nobody seems to be opposed to splitting infinitives anymore, and dictionaries (most famously [_Webster’s Third New International Dictionary_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webster%27s_Third_New_International_Dictionary), burned by Nero Wolfe in the novel _Gambit_) are becoming more descriptive and less prescriptive than they were in the old days. So the sources of traditional authority are coming around, or have come around already, but public opinion takes time to shift, and it’s hard to tell what it is to begin with. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2016, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/between-you-and-i-whats-up-with-the-misuse-of-i/764748/109 "2016-09-05T03:57:29Z")
I think Pinker’s _Language Instinct_ has had an immense effect. His ideas might not be radical within the field, but it’s a field where the level of public ignorance was vast. His writing is so compelling and accessible that I think the effect on the popular understanding of language has been as great as was _The Selfish Gene_ for the popular understanding of evolution and genetics. I believe it’s now routinely taught in many undergrad courses. On the other hand, the internet has shown us that any blog or thread along the lines of “What dumb grammar mistakes get _your_ goat?” will immediately attract a vast number of comments - displaying frightening vitriol and utterly parochial ignorance. Here are a couple of Mark Liberman’s old posts on the social aspects of prescriptivist peeving: [The Social Psychology Of Linguistic Naming And Shaming](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004244.html) [Step On A Crack, Break A Grammar Rule](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002224.html) ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2016, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/between-you-and-i-whats-up-with-the-misuse-of-i/764748/110 "2016-09-05T04:29:14Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > … However, it _may_ be that in several decades the language will evolve, and “could of” will be considered a perfectly acceptable variant even in formal registers, who knows? It’s not a question of “excusing” the usage, but language just evolves, and we can’t stop it. And why is it a problem if this _does_ happen? … I think that is not consistent with the historical evolutionary path of English. A few centuries back, early modern English had a second-person singular pronoun and verb declension, but that gradually dropped off like an old scab. English moves toward simplicity. In reality, it seems to me that “coulda” is more venerable than “could of”. In speech, the “have”, even the “-'ve”, is minimally articulated, sometimes a barely audible tongue tap: it will become acceptable to omit the entire syllable, or perhaps render it with a lone apostrophe. Really, the “have” is kind of a superfluous metric assist, the phrases that use it can almost always be distinguished by the mode of the infinitive. Superfluous language elements tend to gradually go extinct. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2016, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/between-you-and-i-whats-up-with-the-misuse-of-i/764748/111 "2016-09-05T04:44:39Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > I think that is not consistent with the historical evolutionary path of English… I’m sure you’re right that it’s not plausible in this case. When it was being discussed I was trying to make the point that a mistake or “ignorant” vernacular can sometimes turn into an acceptable variant and ultimately even the predominant standard form. It would probably be more on point to show some examples of where this has happened in the past - can you suggest any good examples? ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2016, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/between-you-and-i-whats-up-with-the-misuse-of-i/764748/112 "2016-09-05T05:08:29Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > I’m sure you’re right that it’s not plausible in this case. When it was being discussed I was trying to make the point that a mistake or “ignorant” vernacular can sometimes turn into an acceptable variant and ultimately even the predominant standard form. It would probably be more on point to show some examples of where this has happened in the past - can you suggest any good examples? First off, I think it was probably considered bad English to inflect the third person of verbs with “-s”, but “has” was so very much easier to say than “hath”, as well as easier to write. Someone else mention splitting infinitives, which seems to have fully replaced the “proper” form, probably because it has better flow. To that, I would add the decline of the rule “_A preposition is not what you end a sentence with_”, which, because of our compound verb structures, had to go away. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2016, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/between-you-and-i-whats-up-with-the-misuse-of-i/764748/113 "2016-09-05T05:16:46Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > So this begs the question\* - please explain the source for these “rules”, which you claim have authority that goes beyond stylistic or social preference to the extent that they can show syntactic variants in common usage to be objectively “wrong” (i.e. the rules are not empirical), yet are not arbitrary? > > [\*I _dare_ you] Let’s explore that with respect to the subject of the OP. For the sake of discussion let’s assign neutral labels to the two positions in question. Let’s call them “Jane and I” and “Jane and me” and ask which one is grammatical when used in the accusative case, as in “It doesn’t make sense to Jane and x”. Let’s also clearly understand that your demand for a source “that goes beyond stylistic or social preference” is a contradiction in terms because any grammar rule beyond the trivially basic can be contemptuously dismissed as being “stylistic”, with the word “merely” perhaps thrown in for good measure. The meaningful question at hand is whether such rules have a logical basis and a constructive purpose, which is precisely what distinguishes the useful rules of grammar from the arbitrary ones. The difference between precriptive and descriptive rules is only a matter of degree and perspective. The only kind of rule-making that makes any sense at all is overwhelmingly empirical: you observe how the language is used, and you makes rules to describe it systematically. What has given prescritivists a bad name is that in the process of doing their good work, some have tended to become overly judgmental. Just as with government, the governance of language can be democratic or it can be authoritarian or anything in between, but language does need governance just as society does. Both survived without it for a time, but they were pretty primitive. The source for “Jane and me” is the principle that the objective case takes the objective form of the pronoun within a conjunction just as it would if it stood alone; that is, “It doesn’t make sense to Jane and me” is grammatical for the same reason that “It doesn’t make sense to me” is grammatical. This seems almost self-evident, but it can be further argued that, given the two choices, having the pronoun agree with the case of the entire conjunction is preferable to having it clash, and contributes to a more elegant and ultimately more functional language. **Please note that exactly the same kind of logical rationalization prevails** when Steven Pinker justifies the opposite usage. He simply takes a different analytical approach, and argues that if a conjunction of singulars like “she and Jennifer” is plural, then in a conjunction like “Jane and I” the case of the pronoun should be allowed to be independent of the case of the conjunction as a whole. As an aside, I’m not really persuaded by Pinker’s reasoning. “She and Jennifer” is plural because it’s a list or set, so we naturally treat it as plural irrespective of the singular components, whereas there’s no parallel reason why a pronoun should suddenly switch case. Multiple singular items make a plural, but multiple items in a conjunction used in the object case don’t suddenly take on the subject case for no discernible reason. Geoff Pullum is equally as inclined as Pinker to justify “Jane and I” but offers a completely different reason. He simply decrees that certain verbs take accusative pronoun complements, and just like magic – _poof_ – the “Jane and I” crowd is vindicated. Like Pinker, he’s reverse-engineered a grammar rule – albeit a different one – to justify the variant that he observes many people use. But then again, many people don’t. And therein lies the rub. If we’re going to do polls and popularity contests, there’s that NPR poll I linked earlier where the misuse of “I” and “me” was at the very top of the list of the respondents’ grammar complaints. So the best that can be said for “Jane and I” is that there may or may not be sufficient critical mass to deem it grammatical, but there’s not a lot of doubt about which version is standard and preferred. ---
**Author:** ![joyfool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/df788c/32.png) [@joyfool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joyfool)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2016, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/between-you-and-i-whats-up-with-the-misuse-of-i/764748/114 "2016-09-05T05:32:13Z")
I blame Eddie Rabbit and Crystal Gayle. It’s their fault. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2016, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/between-you-and-i-whats-up-with-the-misuse-of-i/764748/115 "2016-09-05T05:44:54Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > The difference between precriptive and descriptive rules is only a matter of degree and perspective… > > **Please note that exactly the same kind of logical rationalization prevails** when Steven Pinker justifies the opposite usage. He simply takes a different analytical approach… No. Pinker is observing how people actually speak, and trying to understand empirically what (unconscious) rules they are following in building sentences. It is a complete misrepresentation to claim that he or Pullum are trying to “rationalize” or “justify” usage - they are trying to _understand_ the emergent empirical rules underlying natural language. What _you_ are doing is to observe that there are two variants found in empirical speech, and to decree that one is objectively _wrong_. That is obviously non-empirical, because any empirically-derived rule must by definition allow both variants. > [@wolfpup](#): > > If we’re going to do polls and popularity contests, there’s that NPR poll I linked earlier where the misuse of “I” and “me” was at the very top of the list of the respondents’ grammar complaints. So the best that can be said for “Jane and I” is that there may or may not be sufficient critical mass to deem it grammatical, but there’s not a lot of doubt about which version is standard and preferred. And it appears that your basis for deeming one variant objectively ungrammatical is that ignorant people complain loudly about it on the internet, and you personally find it illogical, notwithstanding the fact that experts linguists do not? On that basis, are those baggy pants that teenage boys these days wear that slip down and show their underwear objectively unfashionable? ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2016, 7:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/between-you-and-i-whats-up-with-the-misuse-of-i/764748/116 "2016-09-05T07:02:37Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > No. Pinker is observing how people actually speak, and trying to understand empirically what (unconscious) rules they are following in building sentences. It is a complete misrepresentation to claim that he or Pullum are trying to “rationalize” or “justify” usage - they are trying to _understand_ the emergent empirical rules underlying natural language. No. That may be what linguists do for a living, but that’s not what Pinker was doing in this particular combative opinion piece that was subtitled “the fallacies of the language mavens”, the sole purpose of which was to justify language usages that were criticized by the established orthodoxy. I admire Pinker but when I disagree with him I’ll say so, and this is one of those times – his explanation is convoluted and unpersuasive and was never represented as anything other than “here’s a cool explanation for why this is not grammatically wrong” and, by implication, “this is why William Safire is stupid and wrong”. > [@Riemann](#): > > What _you_ are doing is to observe that there are two variants found in empirical speech, and to decree that one is objectively _wrong_. That is obviously non-empirical, because any empirically-derived rule must by definition allow both variants. That’s just silly. Do we have “empirically derived rules” for every asinine language mistake that has ever been made? > [@Riemann](#): > > And it appears that your basis for deeming one variant objectively ungrammatical is that ignorant people complain loudly about it on the internet, and you personally find it illogical, notwithstanding the fact that experts linguists do not? On that basis, are those baggy pants that teenage boys these days wear that slip down and show their underwear objectively unfashionable? What are the criteria by which you’ve determined the NPR audience to be “ignorant”, and the object of their disdain to be highly intelligent? ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2016, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/between-you-and-i-whats-up-with-the-misuse-of-i/764748/117 "2016-09-05T07:39:26Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > No. That may be what linguists do for a living, but that’s not what Pinker was doing in this particular combative opinion piece that was subtitled “the fallacies of the language mavens”, the sole purpose of which was to justify language usages that were criticized by the established orthodoxy. Nope. The empirical data show that both “me” or “I” are variants observed in common usage in the situation in question. Safire (along with you) proposes a rule, unsupported by evidence, that decrees that one of the variants in common usage is _wrong_ or a _mistake_. Safire’s rule has no foundation than his personal opinion, and is inconsistent with the actual observed language. Pinker simply points out that the “rule” Safire claims is not followed in practice in the way people actually use the language, nor is there any _a priori_ or “logical” reason that it _need_ exist. [I assume that this is Pinker’s article that you’re referring to](https://newrepublic.com/article/77732/grammar-puss-steven-pinker-language-william-safire), by the way. > [@wolfpup](#): > > That’s just silly. Do we have “empirically derived rules” for every asinine language mistake that has ever been made? Well that’s pleasing, now I can use _begging the question_ in the other sense, for here you are guilty of _petitio principii_. On what basis do you claim that one of the two commonly used variants obserged in the way people actually use the language is an _asinine language mistake_? > [@wolfpup](#): > > What are the criteria by which you’ve determined the NPR audience to be “ignorant”, and the object of their disdain to be highly intelligent? From experience, I think I’m on fairly solid ground that angry prescriptivist peeving is 100% correlated with complete ignorance of linguistics. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2016, 7:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/between-you-and-i-whats-up-with-the-misuse-of-i/764748/118 "2016-09-05T07:55:09Z")
And at this point, I think I’m going to bow out of this. There’s a certain amount of energy I’m prepared to put into these discussions for the benefit of people who may not be familiar with the issues. But I realize from prior conversations that you just keep returning to the same tired prescriptivist tropes, and that you are committed to a misguided, stultifying and frankly depressing attitude to language, and that nothing I say can possibly change that. It saddens me that the remarkable spontaneous processes of natural language are something that you (and a great many others who share your misconceptions) cannot appreciate and enjoy, and that you seem to see language as a never-ending battle between purity and corruption. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2016, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/between-you-and-i-whats-up-with-the-misuse-of-i/764748/119 "2016-09-05T13:10:00Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > And at this point, I think I’m going to bow out of this. There’s a certain amount of energy I’m prepared to put into these discussions for the benefit of people who may not be familiar with the issues. But I realize from prior conversations that you just keep returning to the same tired prescriptivist tropes, and that you are committed to a misguided, stultifying and frankly depressing attitude to language, and that nothing I say can possibly change that. It saddens me that the remarkable spontaneous processes of natural language are something that you (and a great many others who share your misconceptions) cannot appreciate and enjoy, and that you seem to see language as a never-ending battle between purity and corruption. So much for objectivity. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2016, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/between-you-and-i-whats-up-with-the-misuse-of-i/764748/120 "2016-09-05T14:26:30Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > Nope. The empirical data show that both “me” or “I” are variants observed in common usage in the situation in question. Safire (along with you) proposes a rule, unsupported by evidence, that decrees that one of the variants in common usage is _wrong_ or a _mistake_. Safire’s rule has no foundation than his personal opinion, and is inconsistent with the actual observed language. Pinker simply points out that the “rule” Safire claims is not followed in practice in the way people actually use the language, nor is there any _a priori_ or “logical” reason that it _need_ exist. No, and I discussed all that in the earlier post. There is logic in Safire’s rule – the same logic I described. You are entitled to disagree, but it seems logical to me and to a vast cross-section of the English-speaking world. And no one disputes that some people’s speech violates this rule – this is the whole point of the thread. The question at hand is why, and Pinker himself alludes to hypercorrection as the explanation, and then launches into a grammatical analysis to try to show that it’s perfectly grammatical after all, which, as I said, I find rather implausible. Both positions are to some degree matters of opinion, and both are supported by evidence and logic of various degrees of plausibility. We seem to disagree on which position is the more reasonable, which is a far cry from how you’ve described it. > [@Riemann](#): > > Well that’s pleasing, now I can use _begging the question_ in the other sense, for here you are guilty of _petitio principii_. On what basis do you claim that one of the two commonly used variants obserged in the way people actually use the language is an _asinine language mistake_? I wasn’t referring to that, but to the apparently unqualified comment that all usage can be understood by empirically derived rules. Consider some Internet posts, particularly on less than reputable sites, and in particular those whose author seems to be plagued by a permanently faulty Caps key, who is either ignorant of its function or has it permanently locked down, and consider the typical literary quality of such a post. You know the kind I mean, we’ve all seen them. Would we seek to understand the nature of the language in such a post in terms of empirical rules, or would we say it was illiterate garbage? > [@Riemann](#): > > From experience, I think I’m on fairly solid ground that angry prescriptivist peeving is 100% correlated with complete ignorance of linguistics. Sounds like a lot of prejudging going on. Moreover, the conclusion that the population subgroup who are NPR listeners are “ignorant” while the subgroup of the general population who hypercorrect (as we all agreed is the likely explanation for using “Jane and I” in the object case) are spectacularly intelligent seems to stretch credulity to the breaking point, to put it gently. > [@Riemann](#): > > And at this point, I think I’m going to bow out of this. There’s a certain amount of energy I’m prepared to put into these discussions for the benefit of people who may not be familiar with the issues. But I realize from prior conversations that you just keep returning to the same tired prescriptivist tropes, and that you are committed to a misguided, stultifying and frankly depressing attitude to language, and that nothing I say can possibly change that. It saddens me that the remarkable spontaneous processes of natural language are something that you (and a great many others who share your misconceptions) cannot appreciate and enjoy, and that you seem to see language as a never-ending battle between purity and corruption. Fair enough, I think it was getting there anyway. But I thank you for an interesting discussion, and one in which I actually adjusted my views somewhat (now I’m fine with “it’s me”!). But I see no need for the gloom and doom and denigration. Any of us should be proud to be judged to be even within a country mile of someone like the late William Safire, whose wit and wisdom enriched our lives and language. Pinker himself doesn’t share your views, even though he disagreed with many of Safire’s language prescriptions. In that same article Pinker also said “there is no contradiction … in saying that every normal person can speak grammatically (in the sense of systematically) and ungrammatically (in the sense of nonprescriptively), just as there is no contradiction in saying that a taxi obeys the laws of physics but breaks the laws of Massachusetts”. This is the crux of our differences. It’s like saying that of course it’s not wrong for a car to go 100 mph in Boston, because here is a car that just did. You need to consult a lawyer, not a physicist, to get a proper opinion on that. A particular usage is _ipso facto_ wrong if it violates, say, an organization’s style guide, and it’s also wrong if it violates the norms of a particular language community. One might qualify that by saying it’s only wrong in the context of that community. But if the community is very large, say the community that speaks Standard English, one can just say it’s wrong because the context is implied, much as one says it’s wrong to shoot a business competitor even though it may be routine practice among the criminal classes. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/between-you-and-i-whats-up-with-the-misuse-of-i/764748.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/between-you-and-i-whats-up-with-the-misuse-of-i/764748.md?page=7)