Grammar: You and I?!

ie you'd never say "me went down the shops" so you shouldn't say "you and me went down the shops".

Just drop the "_____ and" when talking about "_____ and I/me" in the context of a sentence!! That'll make things a ton easier.

"Denise and I saw the Josh Hartnett film at the new movie megaplex."

"Mrs. Eckhert gave the commendation awards to Dana and me."

Etc., etc., etc.

For example, the correct answer to:

"Who will be accompanying me to the Busted concert?"

is according to some grammarians:

"Your sister and I"

because the sense of the sentence is "Your sister and I will be accompanying you to the Busted concert".

All the above only applies if you are pronouncing 'Busted' in the Wes Butters style.

using "myself" would be wrong also, though.

N, your point/question since the answer "You and I" (or whatever) is not a complete sentence to begin with.

"the presents that belong to john and me"

becomes

"john's and my presents"

(it sounds odd but it's right, and it doesn't sound any odder than the other ways people fuck this up)

My point was that 'You and I' looks weird, like it's a list of objects and should therefore be 'you and me'. I dunno - if it doesn't look weird to you then it doesn't matter.

"My presents"

"John's presents"

The rule for possesive pronouns is when used before a noun use my, your, our, etc. When a possesive is used alone then it is mine, yours, ours, etc.

My point was it doesn't really matter which way is correct b/c the example you gave was an incomplete sentence anyway.

This is exactly what I was saying, on both counts.

I think in my example either should be correct as it depends how you read the 'incomplete' (bit rockist, that?) sentence anyway. But I know that many grammarians would insist on 'your sister and I' in that context.

"Who's going to the movie with me?"
"Lisa and I"

"Who do I deliver this pizza to?"
"Lisa and me"

Sam's examples above = the correct way, as I was taught, anyway. The first of her examples above is the same as my original one.

I was just suggesting that, with fragments, I'm coming round to being more flexible about the rule, because incomplete sentences as answers can have a looser syntactic connection to the preceding question than Sam and the traditional grammatical rules would insist.

I'm trying to correct that though. I need to set a better example for my students. We've been hitting progressive verbs ("I am walking home") and subject/verb agreement a lot b/c they are not used to hearing standard English.

Yesterday when I corrected a student who gave "I be cleaning my room" as an example to the rest of the class, he said "That just doesn't sound right."

I have to watch my speech, too. When I'm just talking with the kids I tend to use (as they call it) "ghetto talk."

if you're really ghetto it'd have been "yo bitch clean my room"

-fh

Well, if he's always cleaning his room then "I be cleaning my room" is fine, but if he just meant to tell you he is cleaning his room at that moment, he should have said "I cleaning my room."

The progressive from of a verb is used to express an action or condition that is continuous. The present and past forms of progressive nouns include a conjugated form of "to be", but never "be".

I never tell my students that their manner of speech is "incorrect". (I fully understand and recognize Black English--and Southern for that matter--as a distinct dialect with its own rules.) What I do tell them is that they must know Standard English and, most importantly, when to use it.

I tell them that when we speak casually with our friends or family we can speak however we like. But when writing or in formal situations (like when they are interviewing for jobs/scholarships) they should use Standard English. I stress that in our classroom, and especially in their writing, they are always to use Standard English. They need the practice.

Also, like I said above, I'm not always good at this myself since I tend to speak like them when I'm talking to them. But I'm trying to be more conscious of this.

"Is" is a linking verb. This means that there is no "object" as there would be with an action verb, but rather a predicate nominative that would assume the nominative case ("I.") So it should be "the object of the sentence is I," which sounds awkward in informal English, but is technically the correct grammatical form.

Sam, you should have gone totally psycho on his ass for this! ;)

First, "be" (the base form of "is") also functions as a helping verb. Similar to linking verb but not the same.

Second, this rule of formal English (using the subject pronoun in the predicate) is only applicable after using a linking verb. Using an object here is generaly not considered incorrect.

I think the orginal question was referring to the general use of these two pronoun cases rather than one arcane rule.

Like I said, these discussions are fun for me. My kids are so far gone well. . .I still have a hard time getting them to distingush between nouns and verbs. My daily grammar work rarely gets so advanced and precise.

ask a silly question...

3.3 Copula deletion
In [African-American Vernacular English], the copula (the verb to be) is omitted in situations where [Standard American English] allows contraction:
AAVE          SAE
He nice.      He is nice. / He’s nice.
They mine.    They are mine. / They’re mine.
However, when SAE does not allow contraction, AAVE does not omit the copula:
AAVE                       SAE
How beautiful you are.     How beautiful you are.
*How beautiful you.        *How beautiful you’re.
Here I am.                 Here I am.
*Here I.                   *Here I’m
Swahili, Hebrew and Russian also omit the copula in the present tense:
Russian
Ona  krasivaya.
She  nice
‘She is nice.’

(source)

why is 'I' capitalised but 'you' isn't?

I is a weird word when you think about it too much

'I' is capitalized purely as a typographical convention. Such conventions do not need a rational justification. This like asking why people shake hands instead of, say, mutually dabbling one another's fingertips, which would be more pleasant and friendly.

For all I know the capital 'I' convention was started by typesetters because they wanted to preserve miniscule 'i's, which tended to run out, for other purposes, while capital 'I's were in oversupply in the typecase. Whatever the real genesis is, it's bound to be something equally mundane or absurd.