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Phrases and sentences : grammar

George Yule
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Summary

Dear Ann Landers,

My husband recently ran for public office. He went to the local radio station to record an ad to be read on the air. The copy was written by someone at the station.

One of the sentences was, “Me and my family will be moving to this town.” When I heard it on the air, I was shocked. My husband said, “That's the way they wrote it. It didn't sound right to me, either.”

I immediately went to the station and challenged them. They said, “You are wrong.” We then telephoned a graduate of Northwestern University who was an English major. He said it could be either “I” or “me”.

Am I an ignoramus? I was taught to diagram sentences when in doubt. It comes out, “Me will be moving.” Does this sound like correct English to you? Please settle it.

Feeling Like a Fool.

Quoted in Lakoff (1990)

We have already considered two levels of description used in the study of language. We have described linguistic expressions as sequences of sounds that can be represented in the phonetic alphabet and described in terms of their features.

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The Study of Language , pp. 73 - 85
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

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