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From: ran@ho95b.UUCP (RANeinast)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Death for we who deserve it
Message-ID: <275@ho95b.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 7-Dec-84 08:54:53 EST
Article-I.D.: ho95b.275
Posted: Fri Dec  7 08:54:53 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 8-Dec-84 05:07:20 EST
Organization: AT&T-Bell Labs, Holmdel, NJ
Lines: 60





>>Death for we who deserve it is one thing.
>>        -- Paul duBois

>Come on, Paul.  It's "us!"  "Death for *us* who deserve it."
>                    Mark Fishman


I'd like to see some discussion on the grammar here.
The way I understand it, both are acceptable grammar,
they just mean different things (stress different aspects).
Let me rewrite the sentences with what I think are
illustrative phrasal groupings:

"Death for (we who deserve it) is one thing."
In this case, the object of the preposition
is a gerund phrase (so that "we" is correct as
nominative case).  The object of the preposition
is specifically "we who deserve it" as a group,
and death is intended only for that specific group.

"Death for us (who deserve it) is one thing."
In this case, we have a modifying phrase (the "us"
is the object of the preposition, and therefore
the objective case is correct).  The "who deserves it"
modifies "us", and is in some sense incidental.


Two similar sentences are
1) My father objects to me picking my nose,
and
2) My father objects to my picking my nose.

In 2), what my father objects to is the nose picking,
when done by me.  In 1), he objects to me (as a person)
when I am in the act of picking my nose.  The
stress of what's important is different.

Most people usually say 1) but mean 2).
I notice that newspeople are particularly guilty
of this transgression.


Do other people out there have the same interpretations
of the grammatical difference?

By the way, I don't have a copy of the bible
(oops, Strunk and White).  I use a grammar text from
back in the stone age (1940's :-)).



-- 

". . . and shun the frumious Bandersnatch."
       Robert Neinast (ihnp4!ho95b!ran)
       AT&T-Bell Labs