On Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:40:26 -0700, Brian Huntley
<
[email protected]> wrote:
>On Jul 27, 2:36 pm, "Amy Blankenship"
><[email protected]> wrote:
>> Just for future reference, "on we" is probably good enough for the type of
>> informal communications going on here, but when you are using a form of the
>> plural pronoun in business communications as the object of a preposition,
>> you may want to consider using "us".
>
>
>As in "Us, the people...."
>
>The usage was "we employers." Sounds right to me.
Dear Brian,
Sorry, but it's common to confuse subjective and objective case.
Whether we-employers or us-employers is correct depends on whether the
phrase is used as the subject or the object of a phrase or clause.
We, the people, are the proud subject of this sentence.
But this sentence refers to us, the people, as merely the object of a
preposition.
Thus we (not us) grammarians write that he (not him) must be goofing
on us (not on-we).
We like to sneer at whoever/whomever . . .
Sorry, not enough information yet--will whoever/whomever be the
subject or the object of the as-yet unknown subordinate clause?
.. . . at whoever is dumb enough to screw up ****ling little points.
(he is dumb enough, subjective)
.. . . at whomever we can catch screwing up ****ling little points.
(we can catch him, objective)
A dollar and such expertise (expressed with typical snottiness) is
usually enough to get a cup of hot coffee spilled on your lap by a
waiter who/whom . . .
.. . . who (not whom) is annoyed by us jerks.
Subjective case--he is annoyed, not him is annoyed.
.. . . who (not whom) we thought would not be annoyed by jerks like us.
Still subjective case--we thought (that) he, not him, would not be
annoyed.
.. . . whom (not who) we also failed to tip.
Objective case--we failed to tip him, not he.
Another deadly trap is the linking verb, such as to be, which restates
or renames the subject and therfore uses the subjective case.
Technically, you should reply, "It is I" when someone shouts "Who the
hell's at the door?" The predicate noun takes the objective form, so
only an ill-educated policeman will yell "It is me" before kicking the
door in.
Language, however, is an arbitrary collection of customs, not a
logical system resembling computer programming. The proper grammatical
reply "It is I" is never contracted to "It's I"--we say "It's me,
who'd ya think it was?"
Or perhaps _we_ should say, "It is we"? Aaargh! It's us!
Time to go for my ride before it starts raining, whatever "it" may
refer to.
Cheers,
Carl Fogel
