Talk:Disjunctive pronoun

Either

Not what I was expecting. Isn't "either" a disjunctive pronoun? --Henrygb 02:04, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if that term is used in English grammars, but I would have guessed that "either" is an indefinite pronoun. FilipeS 11:44, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Factual accuracy

• Does someone have a source for calling this a "case" in French?
• And if so, why only in French?
• What evidence is there for saying that écoute-moi, pour moi, Lui et moi sommes partis, Je sais, moi, etc. all involve the same case form? Just the homophony? In that case, the "disjunctive case" forms of nous and vous are even more versatile, since they are used in every syntactic context.

CapnPrep 23:29, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi. I agree that "disjunctive" is not a case in French, since there are no disjunctive nouns. In my opinion, this article should be moved to prepositional pronoun (which is itself in need of a rewrite). FilipeS 11:42, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

P.S. Oops, sorry, that doesn't make much sense. Let me rephrase it: this article should be kept, but renamed disjunctive pronoun. French (and other languages) have special emphatic pronouns called "disjunctive", not a disjunctive case. FilipeS 15:25, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I might agree to that, insofar as renaming and recategorizing and removing the inaccuracies from the current article pretty much amounts to deleting it… But note that the French facts are already treated more fully and more accurately in French personal pronouns#Disjunctive pronouns (see also Dutch grammar#Personal and possessive pronouns, and many others, I am sure), and we don't need another article to repeat all of that information. I would suggest, for the moment, developing the nascent section at the end of Personal pronoun (currently called "It is me", but this has got to change), and then see if there's really enough interest/content for a separate article. CapnPrep 15:46, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

That's another possibility. Let me just remind you, though, that some Celtic languages, for instance, also have disjunctive pronouns... FilipeS 15:53, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I guess it would probably turn out that most languages have disjunctive pronouns (identified by a combination of morphological, syntactic, and phonological criteria that no one will agree on). There is a lot of literature on this, and creating a new stub article on it right away is maybe going to encourage someone to write an organized overview. (I think it will also encourage a lot of less useful contributions…) But renaming this article is less destructive, so I'll remove the {{prod}}. CapnPrep 16:55, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Hello again. I took a look at various articles such as Irish morphology and French personal pronouns, and, to be honest, it seems that "disjunctive pronoun" is a catch-all phrase that each language uses in its own different way. I'm starting to agree with you that there may be no point in keeping this article. FilipeS 16:03, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

You're right, this is kind of a cluster category, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist (and it's already in the Pronoun hierarchy and linked-to from quite a few articles). So I've written a new stub (and renamed the article) and let's see where it goes from there. CapnPrep 17:25, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't know if there's any citable research that's been published on the issue, but I have long suspected that "me" in English functions not only as the accusative, but also as a disjunctive pronoun in places where the nominative would be expected, "I" being used only in immediate conjunction with a verb. This would explain such (prescriptively frowned-upon but widely used) constructions such as "John is taller than me", "It's me", and "Me and John are going to the movies". (Moi in French would be completely grammatical in all those constructions -- could it be Norman French influence on English?) —Angr 18:00, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

See Personal pronouns: "It is me". :-) FilipeS 14:46, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Male and female animate

I'm confused by this paragraph:

Disjunctive pronouns are often semantically restricted. For example, in a language with grammatical gender, masculine and feminine disjunctive pronouns may be reserved for referring to male and female animate entities.

How can a male or a female not be animate? FilipeS 14:54, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I think it means as opposed to inanimate objects that happen to be grammatically masculine or feminine (der Tisch, die Gabel, etc.) —Angr 14:57, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Ah, yes, of course. But then perhaps it would be sufficient to write "For example, in a language with grammatical gender, masculine and feminine disjunctive pronouns may be reserved for referring to male and female animate entities." FilipeS 15:07, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

It was intentional redundancy, to make sure the idea was clear. But I guess it backfired. Anyway, I've made the change and added a bunch of examples. CapnPrep 22:21, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

It's still confusing. So, the second sentence - "Si l'on propose une bonne loi, *je voterai pour elle" - is incorrect? What would be the correct version? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.147.3.174 (talk) 12:49, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

"It's me!"

"...up until a few centuries ago spoken English used pronouns in the subjective case in such sentences. However, since English has lost noun inflection and now relies on word order, using the objective case me after the verb be like other verbs seems very natural to modern speakers."

I think this may have been the case among the more educated speakers of English, but common people have likely used "me" as a disjunctive since they first came into contact with the French in the 11th century. It's no accident that the use of a more common form of English came to predominate as mass education came into being in the early 1800s. The masses naturally imposed their use of the language on the written form of the language, which then became acceptable. Observers of language development seem to assume that languages "suddenly change" at certain periods in time, when, in fact, there are usually different forms of any language that exist side-by-side and then one becomes more popular or accepted. A good case in point in the formation of English verb infinitives, which went from "verb stem + -en" to "to + verb stem" in the 15th century. The two forms existed together for centuries, but the latter form existed in the North of England and then later came to the South at that time. Danwaggoner (talk) 10:38, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

I agree this claim seems dubious...as someone who has read a good deal of Middle English and Early Modern English, the ONLY era during which I notice "it is I" in regular use is the Early Modern period; and in particular in works like the King James Bible, which is pretty much written in a form of English that never actually existed in the real world at any time or place.. As for Middle English, though, I have much objection to the claim that "it is I" was "it am I" in Middle English. IF such a construction were to have been used, the verb would have most likely taken the bare form 'be' - which was far more common then - but as far as I can tell, this type of construction just wasn't done in Middle English. Any declarative statement by a speaker about their self would take the form 'I am -'.

With that said, though, Middle English was also far more liberal than modern English with the use of 'me' in various places. Often combined with a verb, e.g., 'methinketh', also common was 'meseemeth' (meaning 'it seems to me'). Firejuggler86 (talk) 15:11, 6 December 2020 (UTC)