[HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Subject-Verb agreement with compound subjects

[Lee Kaiwen]

Carol:
CJ:
nearly identical concepts of direct and indirect objects. And I can
generally teach all my students need to know about accusative and
dative in under ten minutes.

Carol:
If they already know about the concepts of direct and indirect
objects, there's no point (IMO) in throwing in the outdated
distinction between accusative and dative.

CJ (now):
Just because English no longer possesses case morphology doesn't mean 
case hasn't left its footprint on modern English, and I've found that
reference to the historical past of English helps to explain certain 
peculiarities of modern English that are sources of constant confusion 
to my students. Here's one example that I've had raised in my classes 
more than once (just again this week, and I thought of you :-) ):

Give me it.
Give it me.
Give it to me.

are all semantic equivalents in English. DO/IO/objective case can 
describe, but they can't explain. A quick introduction to case and a 
past in which English word order varied more freely has -- to date, at 
least -- satisfied my students' enquiries on this and similar points.

Carol:
The same form (objective case) is used for both--*and* matches
the names of the uses to which it is put.... What could be simpler?

CJ:
As a description, the above works just fine. As an explanation, it 
stinketh :-).

Carol:
Ask almost any native English speaker to give you the dative or
accusative case of a particular English pronoun, and I almost
guarantee that you'll get a puzzled look and a "Huh?" in response.

CJ:
Huh? ( :-) ). Again, all you're doing is repeating the fact that most 
modern grammarians don't teach dative and accusative, which I don't see 
as relevant.

Carol:
noting that what is taught these days is standard usage, that
is, usage agreed upon by the authorities

CJ:
"Neither he nor I am going" is also taught as "standard usage" by the 
"authorities", despite the fact that no native English speaker would be 
caught dead uttering it. So much for the authorities.

As I understand your argument, it boils down to: if the authorities 
teach it, it's correct. If they don't, it's not. As a linguist, OTOH, I 
tend to find the common man's English more definitive that the PhD-laden 
halls of academia (no offense intended :-) ). I also am of the opinion 
that an historical understanding of the development of English is a most 
useful tool in understanding why English today does what it does. And 
though the objective case paradigm may work well descriptively, it is 
utterly ahistorical, and therefore ill-equipped to explain many of 
English's historical errata.

BTW, I'm off to the States for three weeks and will be away from the 
group, so I'll be unable to respond in the meanwhile.


CJ, ever the populist, who thinks the only relevant English 
"authorities" are the people who speak it.