Barriers between you and I?
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In "'Between you and I'" (10/5/2025), I quoted three theories that Merriam-Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage offers as possible explanations for the confusion over "between you and I" vs. "between you and me". The third of those theories cites Noam Chomsky, whose work is not usually part of usage discussion:
Another possible explanation (unnoticed by the comentaros) comes from the linguist Noam Chomsky. In his Barriers, 1986, he says that compound phrases like you and I are barriers to the assignment of grammatical case. This means that between can assign case only to the whole phrase and not to the individual words that make it up. Thus the individual pronouns are free to be nominative or objective or even reflexives. Chomsky's theory would also explain some other irregularities in pronoun use (See PRONOUNS); it's the best that has been offered so far.
I expressed skepticism about this theory, "for reasons to be discussed another time".
So now is another time, and here's the discussion.
The specific "between you and I/me" construction is not discussed anywhere in Barriers, as far as I can tell. More relevantly, I can't find any support in that work for the general idea that "compound phrases like you and I are barriers to the assignment of grammatical case."
And such a constraint would have been a problem for the theory. For example, in Latin, case assigned by prepositions is invariably spread across conjoined nouns, e.g. in Caesar's "inter Sequanos et Helvetios" or Horace's "ab Jove Neptunoque". Similarly, I think, in other languages with general morphological case-marking.
The work previously done by "barriers" is now the task of "phases", and I'm not up to date with the current epoch of this constantly-evolving set of theories. So I asked a colleague who is.
He confirmed what I thought about the 1986 version of the theory, and the empirical problem for any version preventing case assignment in coordinations:
I can’t find any mention of case assignment by prepositions to a coordination of one or more NPs (as in between you and I/me) in Chomsky 1986. So this seems like a misattribution at best. Furthermore, I don’t think Chomsky claims anywhere that coordinate structures are barriers, so it’s not obvious that he would have predicted any issue with a case assigner like P assigning case to each of the conjuncts.
Such shielding would be possible if &P (the coordination phrase, e.g., [you and I]) were a barrier or, in more modern theorizing, a phase, since syntactic operations like case assignment cannot take place across barriers/phases.
But, as you point out, in languages like Latin, case is assigned (obligatorily, I would suspect) in parallel to all coordinands in a coordination. So, empirically it seems that we don’t want to (always) shield coordinands from case assignment by a case assigner outside &P.
He then went on to offer some insights about the issue, with citations:
That being said, case in English is tricky, especially when it comes to coordinations. While non-coordinate pronominal subjects of finite sentences are always (in colloquial and formal registers/varieties) nominative (1), coordinate pronominal subjects are, in non-prescriptive varieties, typically objective (2).
(1) She already left.
(2) [Jack and {her/*she}] already left. (non-prescriptive register/variety)
This speaks against the conclusion in the quoted Merriam-Webster passage that, roughly, ‘anything goes,’ since there is a clear preference in (2) (for many speakers) for the objective form and not the nominative (or reflexive) form.
Now, there is work (by Chomsky, Joe Emonds, and Nicholas Sobin) on the forms of pronouns in coordinations, and I believe all of them take nominative forms in such contexts (e.g., [you and I]) to be forced by prescriptive norms. One possible indication that regular case assignment (or its absence) is not at fault in the between you and I examples is that, at least for me, apparent ‘nominative’ case assignment is restricted to the second conjunct in such cases:
(3) All debts are cleared between [{her/*she} and I]. (marked)
I simply cannot have she as the first conjunct in (3); between her and I is acceptable, if marked (as indicated). So, whatever mechanism determines the form of English pronouns in coordinate structures probably shouldn’t be the same mechanism that assigns case in parallel to all members of an &P in Latin, etc. Sobin (1997) argues that the above use of … and I in English be handled with a special, extra-grammatical rule that essentially changes the case form of the pronoun in particular contexts (largely determined by prescriptive norms). While that may work for present-day English, of course, this doesn’t account for the use in Shakespeare’s English…
The cited works, all well worth reading, are:
Gary Olson, Lester Faigley and Noam Chomsky, "Language, Politics, and Composition: A Conversation with Noam Chomsky", Journal of Advanced Composition 1991. (see p. 31)
Joseph Emonds, "Grammatically Deviant Prestige Constructions", A festschrift for Sol Saporta 1986.
Nicholas Sobin, "Agreement, Default Rules, and Grammatical Viruses", Linguistic Inquiry 1997.
Here's the abstract from Sobin 1997:
Certain constructions of prestige English, including nominative Case in coordination and plural agreement in expletive constructions, pose difficulties for speakers of English uncharacteristic of normal linguistic constructions. Assuming the Minimalist Program, these linguistically deviant constructions (Emonds 1986) form a structurally coherent group exhibiting signature characteristics including lexical specificity and insensitivity to certain phrasal constituents. Such constructions are argued to be the product of grammar-external rules called grammatical viruses. Virus theory offers an explanation within minimalist assumptions of how "editing" toward such prestige constructions takes place in derivation and of why such constructions are difficult to acquire and control.
Google Scholar lists 322 citing works, and a theory of grammatical viruses strikes me as a good way to think about (some kinds of) prescriptive intrusions — but again, how could Shakespeare have been infected?
Emonds 1986 takes a similar view:
[S]ociological and linguistic evidence shows that the standard or prestige usage is not a grammatical construct, but an extra-grammatical deviation imposed in certain, especially written forms of language exclusively through para-linguistic cultural institutions of the dominant socio-economic class: exclusive and higher education, standard reference handbooks for business and journalism, paid or unpaid secretarial help, ghost writers, etc.
The evidence is convincing, overall, though such paralinguistic imposition is again not very plausible in the 16th century.
J.W. Brewer said,
October 8, 2025 @ 7:48 am
I think an overall analysis here needs to devote more time and focus, and maybe even start with, the phenomenon shown here by the "[Jack and {her/*she}] already left" example offered by myl's informant. It works with two-pronoun compounds as well: Me and him (or "Him and me" – both orders work) went fishing yesterday. The more important point is that the people who routinely say this regardless of prescriptive opprobrium generally would never say "Me went fishing yesterday" or "Him went fishing yesterday," because they intuit full well those are both obviously ungrammatical in the very same variety of English that licenses-or-mandates "Me and him went fishing yesterday." Explaining that difference – why case assignment works differently in that variety for pronouns in compound subjects than simple subjects – seems to me a necessary prerequisite for explaining what happens with pronoun case in compound phrases following prepositions. In order to evaluate an argument from hypercorrection, in particular, you first have to understand what you would expect in the absence of hypercorrection, and if that "expectation" is based on a prescriptive grammar that doesn't explain the "Him and me went …" examples, you're not ready yet.
Mark Liberman said,
October 8, 2025 @ 8:18 am
@J.W. Brewster "Explaining that difference – why case assignment works differently in that variety for pronouns in compound subjects than simple subjects – seems to me a necessary prerequisite for explaining what happens with pronoun case in compound phrases following prepositions."
Indeed — the preposition stuff is really a distraction. And FWIW, my own impression about the coordinate-structure effect is that the objective pronoun forms in English are (also) our tonic pronouns.
Asked whodunit, we'd point and say "Him!" — not "*He!". And similarly for me, her, us, them.
The same thing is true for fronted pronouns in phrases like "Me, I prefer whole wheat". A version with "I" seems totally ungrammatical.
Then the question becomes, does a conjunctive context mandate a tonic pronoun form? Why or why not? Clearly, opinions differ…
David Marjanović said,
October 8, 2025 @ 8:28 am
I think the origin of the phenomenon can only be explained by something already mentioned in the previous post:
Shakespeare's works aren't in a single consistent dialect (close, but not quite), so it at least seems possible that that's where he took it from.
The wider spread, and especially the current peak, may have the same source plus hypercorrection due to prescriptivism. It also looks like some people have reinterpreted and as the world's only preposition that requires the nominative.
~flow said,
October 8, 2025 @ 9:56 am
> I simply cannot have she as the first conjunct in (3); between her and I is acceptable, if marked
That, and also of the four possibilities of putting it the other way round ('between I/me and she/her'), to me, as a non-native speaker, only 'between me and her' seems acceptable. 'Between I and my cat' is awkward or wrong, and 'between she and my cat' is so, too. To me that makes it indeed look like there's a special 'extragrammatical' rule that for some reason (like split infinitives and trailing prepositions) got socially marked at some point in time. I must say though that, when instead of using 'between' we make 'X and Y' the subject(s) of a sentence like 'I/me and she/her are watching TV', 'she/her and I/me are watching TV', then ?'me and her are…' and all 4 variations of the second sentence seem OK-ish (although I'd much prefer to say that 'I'm watching TV with her' or 'she's watching TV with me', or, indeed, 'we're watching TV' in real life, maybe in order to avoid the entire conundrum altogether).
rpsms said,
October 8, 2025 @ 11:59 am
It is almost like a question-and-answer which, being anticipated, is condensed e.g. "Guess who went fishing? Him and me." or "All debts are cleared. Between who? Her and I."
Rick Rubenstein said,
October 8, 2025 @ 3:51 pm
(3) All debts are cleared between [{her/*she} and I]. (marked)
This one surprised me; to my ear, "between she and I" sounds a bit posh, but at least as sound as the alternative "beween her and I".
Bob Ladd said,
October 8, 2025 @ 4:57 pm
MYL's Chomskyan informant in the OP says that "between she and I" is impossible, but I've certainly heard and read such combinations, and Google n-grams provide ample evidence that they are Out There in published (and presumably edited) books. Moreover, while I don't think I would ever say (and would certainly never write) "between she and I" myself, if forced to choose I would prefer "between she and I" to "between her and I". So clearly there's a LOT of variation/uncertainty.
Bob Ladd said,
October 8, 2025 @ 4:59 pm
Rick Rubenstein posted his comment while I was composing mine. But it seems we share the same intuition here.
AntC said,
October 8, 2025 @ 6:12 pm
I agree with @Rick on (3). Yes it sounds a bit posh, in line with "All debts are cleared …" already sounding formal. (But why not just "between us"?) 'She owes me nothing'/'We're square/quits' is how I'd probably put it.
As to the Chomsky analysis, treating this compounding 'between … and …' as some sort of merge of two separate underlying sentences/clauses/phrases to my mind creates extra complications that need further explaining, rather than yielding an economy of description. A debt seems intrinsically something between two parties. How would you even concoct a sentence mentioning only I/me; or only her/she?
(3a) The debt owed to me is cleared.
(3b) The debt owed by her is cleared.
Might both be false (I'm owed debts from others; she owes to further others), whilst (3) is true because she has cleared the specific debt owed to me.
ktschwarz said,
October 8, 2025 @ 9:38 pm
Just because "between she and I" appears in Google Books or the ngram corpus, doesn't mean it was in edited books. Some of them are in instruction books, where it's marked as the wrong answer. Some are in the self-published junk fiction that Google Books is now flooded with, probably not edited. And a surprisingly large fraction — I'd estimate more than half — of the Google Books hits are transcriptions of witness testimony in court, often many decades ago, including one from the commission on the assassination of President Kennedy! I can believe that being a witness in court is a situation that encourages hypercorrection.
Incidentally, though the rate of "between she and I" does seem to have climbed a bit in the ngram since 2000, the rate of "between her and me" has climbed much more rapidly (and so has "between me and her"), so that the "she and I"/"her and me" ratio has actually fallen significantly in the last two decades. Go figure. People are now writing a lot more about their personal relationships with women?
ktschwarz said,
October 8, 2025 @ 9:58 pm
Kids these days! They're blighted by incompetent teachers!
—The Saturday Evening Post, March 25, 1899
~flow said,
October 8, 2025 @ 10:31 pm
> "All debts are cleared. Between who? Her and I."
"All debts are cleared. Between WHOM? Her and I."—Wenn schon, denn schon…
ktschwarz said,
October 9, 2025 @ 6:30 pm
Quoted from MWDEU: "Another possible explanation (unnoticed by the comentaros)"
"Comentaros" is a glitch in the e-book edition; it's "commentators" in the printed book. The conversion to e-book seems to have introduced a lot of such errors — particularly unfortunate for a usage manual.