Jose Carillo's Forum

MY MEDIA ENGLISH WATCH

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A publisher’s seemingly serious blooper in pronoun usage

For this week’s edition of My Media English Watch, I would like to present the observations of a new Forum member, Ms. Menie Odulio, about the widespread misuse of the first-person pronouns in English. In an e-mail sent to me last December 14, Menie lamented the prevalence of the problem and, as a case in point, pointed to what she thought was a particularly telling example of such pronoun misuse in a recent front-page article of a leading newspaper written by the publisher himself.

Here’s Menie’s e-mail in full:

Dear Mr. Carillo,

Thank you for including me in your weekly distribution list. While I am not in the writing profession, I do have a keen interest in language and I find your forum educational.

I noticed lately that people are not following the rule which I was taught in grade school about the use of the first person pronouns. What I remember is that we are supposed to use “I” or “we” if it is the subject, and “me” or “us” if it is the object—whether of a predicate or a preposition. I’ve encountered lots of instances of what I consider to be errors when a compound subject or object is used, e.g., “This was given to John and I by my friend.” So I am surprised to read the following on the front page of the Philippine Daily Inquirer last Sunday, in the article “Alive and well on Tuesdays with Gani” by no less than its publisher Isagani Yambot:

“Now the critique of the previous week’s issues is being conducted by two people: Rosario ‘Chato’ Garcellano, associate editor for readership, who does an in-depth critique of many stories; and I who concentrate on grammatical and linguistic errors, headlines, photo appreciation and editing and page layout.”

My analysis of this is that “I” was wrongly used, because it is the object of the preposition “by.” But then again, since it was written by the Inquirer publisher himself, maybe my analysis is wrong.  What do you think?  Was “I” used correctly in the sentence above?

Thanks,
Menie Odulio

Here’s my reply to Menie:

Dear Menie:

You’re most welcome! I’m always on the lookout for people with a keen interest in language, and I must say that your observations about case misuse in English are right on the mark. The teaching of case usage in our schools is indeed woefully inadequate and I think this largely explains the very high incidence of case misuse that you described.  

At first blush it does seem that Mr. Isagani Yambot, the publisher of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, committed a grammatical error in using the first-person pronoun “I” in this sentence that you quoted:

“Now the critique of the previous week’s issues is being conducted by two people: Rosario ‘Chato’ Garcellano, associate editor for readership, who does an in-depth critique of many stories; and I who concentrate on grammatical and linguistic errors, headlines, photo appreciation and editing and page layout.”

On closer scrutiny, though, I find his usage of “I” in that sentence perfectly in order. The true object of the preposition “by” in that sentence is the noun “two people,” which is actually in the objective case. There is therefore no grammatical violation in that clause construction: the object of the preposition “by” is “two people,” which I must repeat for emphasis is in the objective form. 

Remember now that in English, nouns don’t inflect or change form in three of the cases—the subjective, the nominative, and the objective; only in the possessive case does a noun inflect—with an apostrophe-s (’s) as suffix. In contrast, as we all know, most of the pronouns inflect depending on case. (Click to read Lesson #3 - “The Matter of Case in English” in the Forum.) This is a peculiarity of case usage in English that understandably causes a lot confusion among native and nonnative English users alike, and it’s a pity that the teaching of case usage in our schools isn’t being done well enough.

The following examples should suffice to illustrate the proper form of nouns in the four cases in English:

(1) The noun form “two women” in the subjective case (the noun as subject of the sentence): “Two women were found at the scene of the crime.”

(2) The noun form “two women” in the nominative case (the noun as doer of the action): “Two women committed the crime.”

(3) The noun form “two women” in the objective case (the noun as direct object): The police arrested the two women for the crime.”

(4) The noun form “two women” in the objective case (the noun as object of the preposition): The crime was committed by two women.”

(5) The noun form “two women” in the possessive case (the noun as possessor or owner): Thetwo women’s crime is very serious.”

This explanation of mine, of course, covers by far only the clause “now the critique of the previous week’s issues is being conducted by two people.” That clause, however, happens to end in a colon to indicate this enumerative sequence: “Rosario ‘Chato’ Garcellano, associate editor for readership, who does an in-depth critique of many stories; and I who concentrate on grammatical and linguistic errors, headlines, photo appreciation and editing and page layout.”

This enumerative or serial sequence is actually a separate grammar element in that sentence, one that modifies the noun “two people.” And in this modifying phrase, the nouns “Rosario ‘Chato’ Garcellano” and “I” are no longer objects of the preposition “by” in the main clause but nouns in the nominative case; they are doers of the action attributed to them in this modifying phrase.

Now, in English, there’s also this very important but often imperfectly understood case rule: When nouns and pronouns are compounded (joined by the additive function word “and”), they should all be in the same case. So, since the proper noun “Rosario ‘Chato’ Garcellano” is in the nominative case (doer of the action), the pronoun compounded with it definitely should also be in the nominative case I (likewise a doer of the action), not in the objective case form “me” (which would make it a receiver of the action). This is why Mr. Yambot, despite the seeming case-usage discrepancy in that modifying phrase, is grammatically correct in using the nominative-case “I” in that part of his first-person narrative.

I hope this adequately clarifies your doubts about the correctness of the case usage in that passage in question.

With my best wishes,
Joe Carillo

SUGGESTED RELATED READINGS IN THE FORUM:
(1) The uses of “me” and “I”
(2) Lesson #4 - Developing the English Sentence

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