Nonetheless, in Indo-European languages that mark case explicitly, both are characteristically in the nominative case.
And that's what causes grammarians to think that we ought to say "It is I." That's where grammarians lose the thread.
For that reason, the grammatical terminology you describe is, in this specific case, simply wrong, and I am going to use correct terminology instead.
It makes a lot more sense to describe the endings of these sentences as objects than to offer a convoluted explanation that "English has generalized "me" to be used for predicate nominative functions." Why has English so generalized "me"? Because in this situation it's actually an object!
Similarly, that the "It" is a different entity seems to me the simplest explanation. "Who is she?" is an imperfect parallel because "Who is she?" is a question, not a statement, and questions are constructed grammatically backwards from statements (a statement would begin "She is ..."), so it makes sense for them to end with a nominative.
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Date: 2013-04-30 03:48 pm (UTC)And that's what causes grammarians to think that we ought to say "It is I." That's where grammarians lose the thread.
For that reason, the grammatical terminology you describe is, in this specific case, simply wrong, and I am going to use correct terminology instead.
It makes a lot more sense to describe the endings of these sentences as objects than to offer a convoluted explanation that "English has generalized "me" to be used for predicate nominative functions." Why has English so generalized "me"? Because in this situation it's actually an object!
Similarly, that the "It" is a different entity seems to me the simplest explanation. "Who is she?" is an imperfect parallel because "Who is she?" is a question, not a statement, and questions are constructed grammatically backwards from statements (a statement would begin "She is ..."), so it makes sense for them to end with a nominative.