Personal pronouns: nominative and objective case

Gist. English nouns no longer have cases (except possessive 's), but personal pronouns have kept two cases: nominative (subjective) — I, we, he, she, they, and objective (oblique) — me, us, him, her, them. You and it do not change form. In UD, case is assigned by the word form, not by its role in the sentence.

Conditions and exceptions.

• The objective form in subject position or after be in colloquial speech (It's me, Me and him went) stays Case=Acc: the form decides.
• The nominative form in object position (between you and I) stays Case=Nom.
• Only for you and it is case determined by position: subject — Nom, object or word after a preposition — Acc.
• The lemma of an objective form is the nominative: me → I, us → we, him → he, her → she, them → they. Her is ambiguous: objective (I saw her, PRP) or possessive (her book, PRP$; see pron-possessive).
• Archaic thou/thee, ye and colloquial 'em (= them) behave the same way; 's in let's is us (lemma we, Case=Acc).

Examples. She saw him. They told us. It's me. Let*'s** go.*

In UD. UPOS PRON; XPOS PRP; PronType=Prs; Case=Nom or Case=Acc; lemma — the nominative form.

Sources. UD docs/_en/feat/Case.md (Nom, Acc; you, it — by position), docs/_en/pos/PRON.md (table of personal pronouns, lemmas, 's in let's); Santorini 1990, §2, p. 4 (PRP); Sweet NEG I §141 (text-1, p. 82: nominative and objective cases), §1084–1087 (p. 370–372: it is me; hypercorrect between John and I; than me; thou, thee, ye; 'em); Whitney §155, §158 (text-1, p. 86–87: you was once objective only); Kruisinga II.2 §§964–984 (books/k/kr/kruisinga-1925-handbook-present-day-english, vol. 3 = text-3, p. 150–158: it's me is normal; after than/as both forms; her — objective or possessive by word order); Mätzner I, p. 293–295 (books/m/ma/matzner-1874-english-grammar-methodical-analytical, text-1, p. 311–313: you or me, better than him).

rule: en.morph.pron-nominative
what: I, we, he, she, they (and archaic thou, ye) — nominative case, tag PRP
match: p[upos=PRON, form=i|we|he|she|they|thou|ye, !feats.Typo]
require: p[xpos=PRP, feats.Case=Nom, feats.PronType=Prs]
severity: error
source: UD en feat/Case (Nom), pos/PRON

rule: en.morph.pron-accusative
what: me, us, him, them, thee, 'em — objective case, tag PRP
match: p[upos=PRON, form=me|us|him|them|thee|'em|’em, !feats.Typo]
require: p[xpos=PRP, feats.Case=Acc, feats.PronType=Prs]
severity: error
source: UD en feat/Case (Acc), pos/PRON

rule: en.morph.pron-accusative-lemma
what: the lemma of an objective form is the nominative (me → I, us → we, him → he, them → they)
match: p[upos=PRON, xpos=PRP, form=me|us|him|them, !feats.Typo]
require: p[lemma=i|we|he|they]
severity: error
source: UD en pos/PRON (accusative lemmatized to match the nominative)

rule: en.morph.pron-her-accusative
what: her tagged PRP — the objective form of she
match: p[upos=PRON, xpos=PRP, form=her, !feats.Typo]
require: p[lemma=she, feats.Case=Acc]
severity: error
source: UD en pos/PRON, feat/Case

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/en/seeds/morph/pron-personal-case/