Project 1999 Featured at TenTonHammer - Now Public

[fastboy21]

In English, the pronoun in a prepositional phrase is ALWAYS in the accusative...
for example...
"with John and me" NEVER "with John and I"
"between you and me" NEVER "between you and I"
"I hit the ball for him to catch" NEVER "I hit the ball for he to catch"
"With John and me in charge we will succeed" NEVER "With John and I in charge we will succeed"

has nothing to do with predicate or subject in this situation...any time a pronoun is governed by a preposition (i.e. a prepositional phrase) the pronoun must be the accusative in English (object pronoun).

This is often confused by native speakers of English because we naturally say things like:
"This is HIM" when picking up the phone. We are taught by some (usually angry) adult in about 3rd grade that we are wrong for saying that and that we should say, "This is HE", which is (of course) actually correct grammar.

However, after that embarrassing lesson (which most people don't really understand) we feel unsure of ourselves whenever we say ME HIM etc....and start to substitute I and HE all over the place. This is usually wrong.

In the subject predicate of a sentence English (and a number of other languages) use the nominative form of the pronoun. The subject predicate is almost always identified with a "to be" verb in English (i.e. is, was, am, etc.)
So....
"This is he" is correct....NEVER "This is him" (((IS = TO BE VERB = SUBJECT PREDICATE)))
"He hit him" is correct....NEVER "He hit he" (((HIT = ACTION VERB = OBJECT PREDICATE= accusative pronoun)))

This concludes my free English grammar lesson...next week I will discuss the proper use of the subjunctive mood in English (a dying art which if it WERE revived would change the world)---giggle if you caught the subjunctive there.