Informal Use of Case Forms of Personal Pronouns

The pronoun and its stylistic functions

Expressive devices may be created by transposition of pronouns. When objective forms of personal pronouns are used predicatively instead of nom­inative forms, sentences obtain colloquial marking (It is him: It is her; It is me; It is them: It is us).

The meaning of the pronoun / may be contextually rendered by the pronouns we, you, one, he, she and others.

This pornoun may also imply the so called “ the plural of majesty” used mostly in royal prescripts:

By the grace of Our Lord, We, Charles the Second …

The opposite to it is “the plural of modesty”. It is the so-called "scientific we" used in scientific prose instead of / for modesty reasons.

There is also “the plural of humility” (in the speech of uneducated people, as for instance, in Eliza Doolittle’s remark:

Oh, we are proud!

Compare the Russian: Мы, стало быть, деревенские…

The same replacement in a routine conversation creates a humoristic effect (a tipsy man coming home after a workday and addressing his wife cheerful­ly, about himself: Meet us dear! We have come!).

When the pronoun you is replaced by the pronoun one, the statement becomes generalized, its infor­mation being projected not only to the listeners, but to the speaker himself: One should understand, that smoking is really harmful! When I is substi­tuted by he, she, or nouns (the guy, the chap, the fellow, the fool, the girl, etc), the speaker either tries to analyse his own actions with the eyes of a stranger, externally, or he is ironical about himself. Stylistic effects may also be achieved by the usage of archaic pronouns: the personal pronoun thou (2 person singular) and its objective form three, the possessive pronoun thy and its absolute form thine, the reflexive pronoun thyself. These obsolete pro­nouns create the atmosphere of solemnity and elevation, or bring us back to ancient times.

In certain constructions the nominative case form of personal pronouns is interchangeable with the objective case form, the latter being invariably more colloquial and informal.

(1) When a personal pronoun of the third person singular is used predicatively: She was fat and shapeless, but I knew it was her. Cf.... Gradually I became sure that it was she.

(2) When personal pronouns are preceded by than, as and but: Jack was three or four years older than me.

(3) In some verbless constructions after not, and also when the pronoun expresses some emotion, usually surprise, disbelief, amazement: "They's tell me them­selves." — "Not them." "You are the only person who has ever seen Ram." — "Me? "

(4) When a personal pronoun (usually of the first person singular) is part of a word-group serving as a detached apposition to the subject: We're mad, you and me....

(5) When a personal pronoun is the agent in the absolute participle construction: It wasn't easy to retaliate — him being a sergeant.

IE seems to favour a personal pronoun in the objective case when it is inter­changeable with possessive and reflexive pronouns.

E.g.: But it's no good me pretend­ing, is it! Cf. It's no good my pretending that I approve of your going with that woman - Me, I'm watching him now. Cf. Myself I would have got nowhere without the form.

In low colloquial speech we may encounter the use of the noun “ body ” instead of the pronoun “ one” a s in the following examples:

“…. And it fetched us a dollar a day apiece – more than body could tell what to do with”. (M.Twain)

See, finally, the famous lines by R.Burns:

Gin a bogy meet a body

Coming thro’ the rye,

Gin a body kiss a body,

Need a body cry?

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11