Between you and I
Posted: Mon Oct 07, 2019 11:36 pm
In a recent thread, I intimated that I was uncertain as to the "grammaticality" of "between you and I". If anyone was reading that thread, it may have come as a surprise that I would even consider "between you and I" as being even remotely grammatical.
Let me explain. Firstly, language - including grammar - changes over time. Words and grammatical constructs come and go. And as we get older, we become more aware of the changes, particularly as they are happening extremely rapidly in our Internet age. It is only a few generations ago that the distinct second person singular pronouns "thou" and "thee" were in common use, particularly in rural dialects. Indeed, they still survive in some northern dialects to this day. But in standard English, they have gone. Conversely, the emergence of "yous" as a second person plural pronoun in some dialects (in America, Britain and Australia to my knowledge) is relatively recent. I have found it hard to trace any evidence of it prior to the 19th century. But nowadays it is pretty well ubiquitous around Merseyside, even among speakers with relatively weak accents and dialects.
Secondly, the phrase "between you and I" is clearly ungrammatical if one takes the two pronouns individually. A pronoun following a preposition always takes the objective form ("to me", "from her", "above him", "under us", "by them"). However, if you understand "you and I" as a fixed phrase meaning "we", it has, for many people, become invariable between the subjective form ("you and I should meet up next week") and the objective form ("it would be good if he got a card from you and I"). In the same way that "you" is invariable between the subjective and objective forms, the complex pronoun "you and I" is also invariable.
This would mean that "you and I" is a single, invariable pronoun that has entered the language over the past few generations and, if the argument has any traction, the phrase "between you and I" would be grammatical.
And I would argue that, for many people, that is precisely the case. It is grammatical and is in alignment with at least one similar construction (second person pronouns).
Of course, the actual reason for the emergence of "between you and I" and the invariability of "you and I" is due to the endless drilling we had as children that it is polite to mention the person you are addressing before you mention yourself. In other words, it is correct to say "you and I" (rather than "I and you"). The information that has stuck is that "you and I" is right (and hence "you and me" must be wrong).
No. I am not suggesting that we should all start using "between you and I" (it sends shivers down my spine). But I am suggesting that it has a perfectly valid grammaticality. For many, it is just plain wrong and for others it is right because they were taught to be polite (my mother always used it and I could never rid her of the notion that it was "proper" - the fact that I am a competent linguist with a degree in English counted for nothing against the remembered words of her primary school teacher: "always use 'you and I'"). And my mother is in good company. The earliest examples of "between you and I" that I could find were from the early 19th century - from Thomas Gray, Oliver Goldsmith and John Vanburgh...
Grammar is not set in stone, and never has been. Indeed, I doubt that it is even set in semolina pudding. Grammar books have always been written by people of certain social and educational backgrounds and reflect the language that they and their peers speak. They rarely, if ever, reflect the way that ordinary folks speak and have always been used to demonize any dialects and speech forms that depart from those spoken for years in the establishments of higher education.
When two people communicate fluently with each other, it is because they share a common stock of words and arrange them according to grammatical conventions that they also share. The fact that I do not share identical grammatical conventions does not make their speech ungrammatical, however well educated I and poorly educated they may be.
The point of all that? Simply this: Beware the notion of grammaticality; it is not universal.
Let me explain. Firstly, language - including grammar - changes over time. Words and grammatical constructs come and go. And as we get older, we become more aware of the changes, particularly as they are happening extremely rapidly in our Internet age. It is only a few generations ago that the distinct second person singular pronouns "thou" and "thee" were in common use, particularly in rural dialects. Indeed, they still survive in some northern dialects to this day. But in standard English, they have gone. Conversely, the emergence of "yous" as a second person plural pronoun in some dialects (in America, Britain and Australia to my knowledge) is relatively recent. I have found it hard to trace any evidence of it prior to the 19th century. But nowadays it is pretty well ubiquitous around Merseyside, even among speakers with relatively weak accents and dialects.
Secondly, the phrase "between you and I" is clearly ungrammatical if one takes the two pronouns individually. A pronoun following a preposition always takes the objective form ("to me", "from her", "above him", "under us", "by them"). However, if you understand "you and I" as a fixed phrase meaning "we", it has, for many people, become invariable between the subjective form ("you and I should meet up next week") and the objective form ("it would be good if he got a card from you and I"). In the same way that "you" is invariable between the subjective and objective forms, the complex pronoun "you and I" is also invariable.
This would mean that "you and I" is a single, invariable pronoun that has entered the language over the past few generations and, if the argument has any traction, the phrase "between you and I" would be grammatical.
And I would argue that, for many people, that is precisely the case. It is grammatical and is in alignment with at least one similar construction (second person pronouns).
Of course, the actual reason for the emergence of "between you and I" and the invariability of "you and I" is due to the endless drilling we had as children that it is polite to mention the person you are addressing before you mention yourself. In other words, it is correct to say "you and I" (rather than "I and you"). The information that has stuck is that "you and I" is right (and hence "you and me" must be wrong).
No. I am not suggesting that we should all start using "between you and I" (it sends shivers down my spine). But I am suggesting that it has a perfectly valid grammaticality. For many, it is just plain wrong and for others it is right because they were taught to be polite (my mother always used it and I could never rid her of the notion that it was "proper" - the fact that I am a competent linguist with a degree in English counted for nothing against the remembered words of her primary school teacher: "always use 'you and I'"). And my mother is in good company. The earliest examples of "between you and I" that I could find were from the early 19th century - from Thomas Gray, Oliver Goldsmith and John Vanburgh...
Grammar is not set in stone, and never has been. Indeed, I doubt that it is even set in semolina pudding. Grammar books have always been written by people of certain social and educational backgrounds and reflect the language that they and their peers speak. They rarely, if ever, reflect the way that ordinary folks speak and have always been used to demonize any dialects and speech forms that depart from those spoken for years in the establishments of higher education.
When two people communicate fluently with each other, it is because they share a common stock of words and arrange them according to grammatical conventions that they also share. The fact that I do not share identical grammatical conventions does not make their speech ungrammatical, however well educated I and poorly educated they may be.
The point of all that? Simply this: Beware the notion of grammaticality; it is not universal.