Monday, February 8, 2016

That's exactly what he said about (you, me, yours).In the sentence above, the word "you" in parentheses is the correct answer. Can anyone explain...

In this sentence, "That" is a demonstrative pronoun in the
Subject slot. The apostrophe s is a contracted form of "that is" in
which "is" is the be verb filling the Verb slot in the matrix
sentence. The adverb "exactly" is the adverbial complement to the
be verb (is).


The matrix Object slot
is filled by the wh-clause "what he said...." In the
wh-clause, "he" is the Subject of the subordinate clause embedded
in the matrix clause and "said" is the Verb. The prepositional phrase "about
you/me/yours" fills the wh-clause Object slot as an Indirect
Object.


Starting with "yours": "Yours" is the possessive
form of second person pronoun "you" and as such can be used in a Subject or Object slot.
So if you wished, you could say "...he said about yours," with "about" being the
preposition in a Prepositional Phrase filling the Object slot as an Indirect
Object.


Contrast this to first person "I" and "me" in which
"I" is the Subject form and must be used in the Subject slot, while "me" is the Object
form and must be used in the Object slot. Since "me" is the first person Object form, it
can certainly be used in an Object slot in an Indirect Object: "...he said about me."
Finally, "you" is the same in Subject and Object use, so saying "...he said about you,"
with "you" as part of the Indirect Object in the Object slot is also
correct.


The only reason one might prefer "you" over "me"
or "yours" is that in previous usage, which is no longer popular, it was thought
impolite to talk about yourself, hence the origin of excusing phrases like "if I do say
so myself...." Similarly, it was once considered impolite to talk about someone else's
possession without identifying it as in answer to "my what...?" Otherwise, aside from
these old-fashioned polite rules of usage, as you have seen, there is no reason to
consider "...he said of me" and "...he said of yours" as grammatically
incorrect.


readability="4.5328719723183">

href="http://www.easyenglish.com/lesson.asp?him.txt">SUBJECT      
 OBJECT


I                   me
you              
you
he                him
she              her
it      
          it
we               us
you             
you
they            them

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