/Me/ and /her/ was both late. His brother is taller than /him/. That little boy was /me/. /Us/ girls went home. They were John and /him/. /Her/ and little Al is to stay here. She says she thinks /us/ and the Allens. If Weaver and /them/ had not of begin kicking. But not /me/. /Him/ and I are friends. /Me/ and /them/ are friends.
Less numerous, but still varied and plentiful, are the substitutions of nominative forms for objective forms:
She gave it to mother and /I/. She took all of /we/ children. I want you to meet /he/ and I at 29th street. He gave /he/ and I both some. It is going to cost me $6 a week for a room for /she/ and the baby. Anything she has is O. K. for /I/ and Florrie.
Here are some grotesque confusions, indeed. Perhaps the best way to get at the principles underlying them is to examine first, not the cases of their occurrence, but the cases of their non-occurrence. Let us begin with the transfer of the objective form to the nominative in the subject relation. "/Me/ and /her/ was both late" is obviously sound American; one hears it, or something like it, on the streets every day. But one never hears "/me/ was late" or "/her/ was late" or "/us/ was late" or "/him/ was late" or "/them/ was late." Again, one hears "/us/ girls was there" but never "/us/ was there." Yet again, one hears "/her/ and John was married," but never "/her/ was married." The distinction here set up should be immediately plain. It exactly parallels that between /her/ and /hern/, /our/ and /ourn/, /their/ and /theirn/: the tendency, as Sweet says, is "to merge the distinction of nominative and objective in that of conjoint and absolute."[66] The nominative, in the subject relation, takes the usual nominative form only when it is in immediate contact with its verb. If it be separated from its verb by a conjunction or any other part of speech, even including another pronoun, it takes the objective form. Thus "/me/ went home" would strike even the most ignorant shopgirl as "bad grammar," but she would use "/me/ and my friend went," or "/me/ and /him/," or "/he/ and /her/," or "/me/ and /them/" without the slightest hesitation. What is more, if the separation be effected by a conjunction and another pronoun, the other pronoun also changes to the objective form, even though its contact with the verb may be immediate. Thus one hears "/me/ and /her/ was there," not "/me/ and /she/"; /her/ and "/him/ kissed," not "/her/ and /he/." Still more, this second pronoun [Pg222] commonly undergoes the same inflection even when the first member of the group is not another pronoun, but a noun. Thus one hears "John and /her/ were married," not "John and /she/." To this rule there is but one exception, and that is in the case of the first person pronoun, especially in the singular. "/Him/ and /me/ are friends" is heard often, but "/him/ and /I/ are friends" is also heard. /I/ seems to suggest the subject very powerfully; it is actually the subject of perhaps a majority of the sentences uttered by an ignorant man. At all events, it resists the rule, at least partially, and may even do so when actually separated from the verb by another pronoun, itself in the objective form, as for example, in "/I/ and /him/ were there."