Mar­lene Davis

I could write a book about a teacher named Miss Cheru­bim who put the fear of God in­to me as a child aged about ten. She taught with a rod in her hand and she taught us, the chil­dren in her class, to an­swer her in par­rot fash­ion in this way: She would be­gin a sen­tence with the first part of the an­swer she want­ed, but ex­pect us all to cho­rus in at the end with the cor­rect word or phrase that com­plet­ed the an­swer.Most of the time, I'd say the an­swer along with the oth­ers, but I had no idea what the whole say­ing meant. I re­mem­ber one such ex­am­ple. Miss Cheru­bim would say loud­ly: "A prepo­si­tion gov­erns the...?" and she would glare at us un­til we cho­rused: "Ob­jec­tive case."

She was per­fect­ly sat­is­fied and we breathed a sigh of re­lief.I had no idea what a prepo­si­tion was, nor had I any knowl­edge of the ob­jec­tive case, but I would not lose the keys to my brains to ask her what each meant or what the whole say­ing was meant to con­vey.Any­way, I was to re­mem­ber Miss Cheru­bim some years lat­er when my sis­ter and I, as teenagers, chose a card on some im­por­tant oc­ca­sion and gave it to a favourite teacher. My sis­ter had told me to choose and write the ap­pro­pri­ate words on the card and I wrote: "This is from my sis­ter and I."

The teacher told me to have a seat. I thought she was go­ing to thank me for the card, but she pro­ceed­ed, very kind­ly, to ask me what case I should use af­ter a prepo­si­tion.I was ap­palled. I thought, "What is she talk­ing about? Prepo­si­tion? Case?" I was tongue-tied.Very kind­ly, she ex­plained to me that as I in­tend­ed to study Eng­lish at a high­er lev­el, she could not let me leave the room with­out mak­ing sure I un­der­stood the fun­da­men­tal rule that af­ter a prepo­si­tion, I should al­ways use the ob­jec­tive case pro­noun–ie, I should have writ­ten "This is from my sis­ter and me," be­cause "from" is a prepo­si­tion and would not take the sub­ject pro­noun I, but the ob­jec­tive pro­noun "me." I shall ex­plain the dif­fer­ence in the next col­umn.

I am eter­nal­ly grate­ful to her for this, even though at the time I was very em­bar­rassed by the ex­pe­ri­ence and went to find my sis­ter, who cheer­ful­ly asked me what she had said about our choice of card. "Card?" I said. "She was on about prepo­si­tions and case and hasn't even glanced at the card!"I told her, though, that at last I un­der­stood what Miss Cheru­bim had been ful­mi­nat­ing about years be­fore, and that at last some­one had ex­plained the rule to me.I had to learn the rule the hard way and now I'm pass­ing it on. Miss Cheru­bim, God rest her soul, must be nod­ding ap­prov­ing­ly and say­ing, "I told you so. You have to know the rules."

A ma­jor rule in Eng­lish is:Prepo­si­tions gov­ern the ob­jec­tive case pro­nouns. That means that they are fol­lowed in a sen­tence by the ob­jec­tive case pro­nouns.Pro­nouns, I was to dis­cov­er, are a force in gram­mar to be reck­oned with in a most se­ri­ous way. Apart from verbs, they are the most for­mi­da­ble of all and not know­ing them can get us in­to no end of trou­ble in Stan­dard Eng­lish speech and writ­ing. I in­tend to spend two columns on them. So, brace your­selves!

PRAC­TICE

Note the un­der­lined prepo­si­tions fol­lowed by the ob­ject pro­nouns in these sen­tences:

1. Be­tween you and me, that is a bad mis­take to make.

2. The cars wait­ed for Stan and me to cross the street.

Ex­pect a quiz on this rule in a fu­ture col­umn.