Aside from those taken up in Part 1 last week, three other sentence constructions involving personal pronouns pose a dilemma to many English users. Again, our authority in this matter is
The American Heritage Book of English Usage, which has taken special note of the contentious aspects of those pronoun choices.
Using personal pronouns after the word “but.” This grammar dilemma must have confounded you as it has confounded so many others: Should you say, “
No one but I wore the uniform” or should you say, “
No one but me wore the uniform”?
Some grammarians insist that since “but” functions as a conjunction in such sentences, the nominative form “I” is the correct choice: “
No one but I wore the uniform.” But other grammarians argue that “but” in such sentences actually works as a preposition, so the objective form “me” should be used instead: “
No one but me wore the uniform.” Proof that this is correct, they point out, is that when the “but” phrase occurs at the end of the sentence, the objective form “me” is the only appropriate choice: “
No one wore the uniform
but me.” To say, “
No one wore the uniform
but I” is obviously incorrect, they argue.
A very good grasp of what prepositions and conjunctions do is needed to clearly understand the pros and cons of this debate, but you need not bother yourself with that at this point. It’s enough to know that when
The American Heritage Book of English Usage consulted its grammar usage panel about the “but” dilemma, 73 percent of the panel members supported the idea that it’s best to consider “but” as a preposition in such constructions when the “but” phrase precedes the verb, and 93 percent when the “but” phrase follows the verb.
So you’re really very well advised to use the objective form “me” for such constructions: “
No one but me wore the uniform.” “
No one wore the uniform
but me.”
Using personal pronouns after the word “except.” In the same way as “but,” the word “except” (in the sense of “with the exclusion of” or “other than”) is generally considered by grammar authorities as a preposition, not a conjunction. So you can confidently use the objective form “me” after “except” all the time: “
No one except me wore the uniform.” “
No one wore the uniform
except me.”
Using personal pronouns after “than.” In sentences where a personal pronoun follows the conjunction “than,” it is incorrect to say, “Alberto may be stockier, but Eduardo is taller than him.” The well-accepted usage is the nominative case: “Alberto may be stockier, but Eduardo is
taller than he.” This is because such a sentence can actually be viewed as a truncated or “understood” version of this sentence: “Alberto may be stockier, but Eduardo is
taller than he is.” (This is comparable to the grammar situation where a proper noun comes after “than,” as in the sentence “Eduardo is taller than Alberto,” which is a truncated version of “Eduardo is
taller than Alberto is.”)
Take note, though, that the personal pronoun should be in the objective case in sentences where the pronoun following “than” is the object of an understood verb, as in this sentence: “The board’s decision shocked Helen
more than me.” This is hardly surprising because that sentence can readily be seen as a truncated version of this sentence: “The board’s decision shocked Helen
more than it shocked me.” (The truncation process does away with the phrase “it shocked” in such constructions.)
So, when you’re sometimes tempted—like so many people—to say, “The board’s decision shocked Helen
more than I,” be forewarned that good grammar isn’t exactly on your side. So stick to “The board’s decision shocked Helen
more than me.”
We should now be in a good position to deal with all of these problematic aspects of personal pronoun usage in English.
Read this column and listen to its voice recording in
The Manila Times:
Dealing with problematic pronoun usage- 2(Next:
The grammar of the indefinite pronouns) May 25, 2023
Visit Jose Carillo’s English Forum, http://josecarilloforum.com. You can follow me on Facebook and Twitter and e-mail me at j8carillo@yahoo.com.
