[mea] Re: The great ME vs. MYSELF debate with Jane and her damn coffee
- From: Karen McElrea <karenmcelrea@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <mea@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2012 18:25:03 -0600
Thanks for passing that along, Cheri - interesting results, indeed.
Have yourself a nice weekend!
To: mea@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [mea] The great ME vs. MYSELF debate with Jane and her damn coffee
From: cheri.frazer@xxxxxxxxxx
Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2012 15:36:54 -0600
This has been a fascinating subject, and
thanks to R and J for getting it started!
Sentence: "I made
coffee for Jane and me/myself"
[I'm omitting the end period to make
it easier to quote samples.]
I consulted with two linguistics professors
(one retired, one active), and the short answer is: you can use
either.
Long answer, for those who also love this stuff:
There are two rules that collide in
this sentence:
(1) With compound object pronouns, each
pronoun in the object should use the objective form. (In plain English:
each half of the sentence needs to make sense by itself.)
This works great with sentences like
"Send invitations to Jane and me" [Send an invitation to Jane
+ Send an invitation to me].
(2) If a sentence starts with I and
ends with the same person, you have to use the reflexive (myself), e.g.,
"I sent the parcel to myself".
When you mix the two rules together,
awkwardness results. Both linguists agree that style trumps rules wherever
awkwardness results from a rule, but the style in this case depends on
what your brain hears. Here's what they both said:
(a) If your brain hears the reflexive then "me" will grate, because
you wouldn't say "I made coffee for me"; therefore, "myself"
will be preferred. But "me" isn't technically wrong in this sentence.
One linguist said that if the sentence were "I made coffee for my
mother and me/myself" then she would choose "myself" because
the sound combo is more pleasing.
(b) If your brain hears the preposition
"for" then you're probably not expecting the reflexive to follow,
because you wouldn't likely say "I made coffee for myself" unless
you were indicating that you didn't make enough for two, or that someone
else was supposed to make it but you made it yourself instead, or that
you made something different for the other person. In that case "me"
will be preferred, but "myself" isn't technically wrong in this
sentence either. Some might also hear it as a hypercorrection, as we often
hear from restaurant staff with the grating "...and yourself?"
GACK.
Interestingly, each linguist had a different
preference, and the editors who wrote to me offline were split down the
middle as well. All were agreed that Jane is a pain in the ass and should
never be invited for coffee again. (Ok, most indicated that they would
recast the sentence to avoid the awkwardness, which is always a great option.)
Thanks to everyone who weighed in, both on the listserv and off.
-Cheri
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