A Word, Please:

I’m not a stickler. A lot of people assume I am. They think that, because I write a column about grammar, surely I’m “pro” good grammar — someone who believes that people should opt for the most proper language and eschew newer, less formal and more controversial uses.

Not true.

I don’t believe in telling people how to speak or write. Dictionaries disagree with one another on many issues, grammarians disagree, usage guides and style books disagree — who am I to say which ones are right and which are wrong?

If I advocate anything, it’s not using good grammar but understanding grammar. It’s much more important to know what a subordinate clause is than to demand that “healthy” can’t mean “healthful” — especially since this is one of those cases in which dictionaries disagree.

A subordinate clause, by the way, is a clause that can’t stand on its own as a sentence. For example, “I slept” is a clause — it contains a subject and a verb — and it also works as a whole sentence. But slap a subordinator like “because” or “if” or “since” or “whether” or “though” or “while,” and suddenly the clause could not stand alone as a complete sentence. So it’s a subordinate clause.

But recently I found myself on the other side of these arguments. I stumbled across some buzz on the websites of Lakeland, Fla.’s The Ledger newspaper and the Amarillo Globe-News in Texas. There, readers were complaining about something Arne Duncan, President-elect Barack Obama’s pick for education secretary, said in his acceptance speech. According to these sites, Duncan thanked those who “gave my sister and I?.?.?.” I don’t know what, exactly, was given. But I don’t need to.

According to the rules of proper grammar, that should have been “my sister and me.” The verb, “gave,” is calling for an object form and not a subject form. That is, you’d say “I gave him” some money and not “I gave he” some money. That’s because “him” is an object pronoun and “he” is a subject pronoun. Most native English speakers have an innate grasp of this concept, but they let themselves get thrown off course by “A and B” constructions. When in doubt, try dropping one of the subjects. They “gave me” something or they “gave I” something? Or try plugging in “us” and “we”: They “gave us” something or they “gave we” something? The answers become instantly clear.