A Student's Introduction to English Grammar

106 Chapter 5 Nouns and noun phrases

g. In the complement use the reflexive forms generally contrast with non-reflexive

ones: [ia] contrasts with Sue hurt her, and so on. In [ia], Sue is the antecedent for the

pronoun, so the meaning is that the person hurt was the same as the one who caused

the hurt: "Sue hurt Sue". In Sue hurt her, by contrast, Sue cannot be the antecedent,

and hence we understand that Sue hurt some other female. Complement reflexives

occur in a close syntactic relation to the antecedent. In the simplest and most com­

mon case, illustrated here, the antecedent is subject of the clause containing the

reflexive as complement of the verb, as in [ia], or of a preposition, as in [iia].

• In the emphatic use only reflexive forms are permitted: we can't say *Sue
  designed the house her. In [ib] the reflexive emphasises that it was Sue who
  designed the house: she didn't have someone else do it. In [iib] it emphasises that
  Sue made the admission: perhaps she was the one who made the mistake.

The nominative-accusative contrast of case

The grammatical category of case applies to a system of inflectional forms whose
primary use is to mark various syntactic functions. This is clearly the major factor
determining the choice between nominative and accusative forms in English, but
style level is an important secondary factor. Compare:
[55] Th ey wrote the editorial.
11 Kim met them in Pa ris.
J1l I was talking to them yesterday.
IV It was they/them who complained.

[subject: nominative 1

[object of verb: accusative]

[object of prep: accusative]

[PC: nominative or accusative]

� When the pronoun is subject of a finite clause it appears in nominative form, and

when it is object - of the verb, as in [ii], or of a preposition, as in [iii] - it appears

in accusative form.

• When the pronoun is predicative complement both forms are found - though the
  nominative is largely restricted to constructions of the form it + be + pronoun,
  as in [iv]. Here the nominative is quite formal in style, with the accusative some­
  what informal. However, in constructions like Th e only person who didn 'f com­
  plain was me a nominative could hardly replace the underlined accusative.

Case in verbless constructions

There is also alternation between the two case-forms in certain verbless constructions:

[56] a. She 's a year younger than I. b. She 's a year younger than me.

Again, the nominative in [a] is strongly formal in style, and the accusative is much
more common in ordinary conversation.

Prescriptive grammar note

The more authoritarian and conservative manuals claim that only a nominative is gram­

matically correct in [55ivl, where the pronoun is predicative complement, and [56],

where it is understood as subject of an elliptical clause (cf. younger than I am). But that

is to confuse correctness with formality, as we pointed out in Ch. 1, § 2 : the accusative

variants are unquestionably grammatical in Standard English.