Constance L. Lieber

I can’t seem to get off this subject — probably because any time I, or someone else, speaks or writes, grammar is the scaffolding in the background that enables us to form comprehensible thoughts. Someone else said this (and unfortunately I have lost the reference) about language being an ever-changing communication device. It reflects on the former militant me — as opposed to the changing and penitent me — and my relationship to change:

This quotation was spurred by someone who said “their teeth hurt” when they heard things like “He gave it to my brother and I.”

“It is not linguists who make rules: it is usage that does. In other words, language is not rule-following, it is rule-described.

“Now it is quite clear that swathes of people say things like “Me and John came to that insight late in life”, or (especially AmE, I believe) “The governor spoke kindly to my wife and I.”

“If this makes your teeth hurt, that is too bad, but it can hardly be helped. Users of the language are speakers. They are not dentists.”