Nevertheless, it is important to consider that an equally troublesome prob-
lem with case gets little attention. When someone knocks on a door and is
asked, “Who is it?” the response nearly always isIt’s me.In formal standard us-
age, the response would beIt’s Ibecause the verbisestablishes equality be-
tween the subject,It,and the noun complement that follows the verb. This
equality includes case, which means that the noun complement in standard us-
age would be set in the nominative case, not the objective. Even so, few people
ever useIt’s I,not even people who use Standard English consistently. The con-
trast between these forms can offer a meaningful language lesson for students.
In addition, the question of case in this situation is interesting because it il-
lustrates the influence of Latin on notions of correctness. Latin and Latin-based
languages are more inflected than is English, so problems of case rarely arise.
For example, we just do not observe native Spanish speakers using an objec-
tive-case pronoun in a nominative position. If a Spanish speaker is asked, “Who
is it?” the response always isSoy yo,neverSoy me.All native Spanish speakers
will rejectSoy meas an appropriate response. This fact offers a useful founda-
tion for a lesson on case in classes with a high percentage of native Spanish-
speaking students.
In an uninflected language like English, on the other hand, speakers rely on
word order not only to determine what is acceptable but also, on a deeper level, to
determine what is grammatical. In a word-order-dependent language like Eng-
lish, case is largely irrelevant. As a result,Fritz and me gave the flowers to
Macarenais acceptable to many people because it conforms to the standard word
order of English. The pronounmeis in the subject position and is understood to
be part of the subject regardless of its case. Likewise,It’s mewill be accepted be-
cause the pronoun is in what normally is the object-complement position. This
analysis explains, in part, why most people thinkIt’s Isounds strange.
Demonstrative Pronouns
There are four demonstrative pronouns:
this, that, these, thoseThey serve to single out, highlight, or draw attention to a noun, as in sen-
tences 10, 11, and 12:
10.Thatcar is a wreck.
11.Thosepeaches don’t look very ripe.
12.Thisbook is really interesting.64 CHAPTER 3