Objective Case Pronouns (Word Usage)

Objective Case Pronouns

Although the title of this article sounds intimidating to those without any background in grammar, linguistics, or case-dependent languages, "objective case pronouns" is merely a technical way of referring to words like "me," "them," "her," "him," and "us," which are used in place of their subjective counterparts "I," "they," "she," "he," and "we." Most times, native English speakers have little difficulty using the right word in the right place, because they have an intuitive knowledge of which form of the word sounds right in a given situation. However, there are some notable occasions when knowing which to use becomes confusing, and even the best speakers and writers sometimes get things wrong. All of the rules and examples below apply to each pair of prepositions listed above, and you can interchange them without worry.

Some languages have what is known as a case system, which means that (among other things not relevant to this article) pronouns change form depending on their role in a given sentence. Latin and German are prime examples of such languages, which makes sense when you consider that English is comprised of a largely Germanic structure and a significantly Latinate vocabulary. To clarify this with an example, consider the English personal pronoun, "I": "I walked to the store." This is the correct place for I, because it is the subject of the sentence, or in other words, the thing in the sentence which does something. On the other hand, we use the word "me" in other situations where it is not the subject of the sentence, as in the following instance: "Billy took me to the park." Here, Billy is the subject, as he is the thing doing the taking, and I (or "me" in this case) am the thing that Billy is taking. In this case, "me" is called an object in the sentence (more specifically, the direct object), and that is where we get the term "objective" found in the title.

There is also another time when the objective case is appropriate, and that is when the pronoun follows a preposition. To refresh your memory, a preposition is one of those (usually) small words that indicate a place or position, like "in," "to," "by," "near," "around," "behind," "under," "against," "for," and many others. When a pronoun follows a preposition, using the objective case form is appropriate, as we can see in the following sentence: "The money matters more to me than the glory." Looking closely, we can see that "the money" is the subject of the sentence (it is the thing that matters), whereas "me" follows a preposition, disqualifying it for consideration as the subject. So, "me" must be the proper form. The most important thing here is not to fall victim to overcorrection. Most people know that it is improper to use "me" in the subject place, as in "Me and Jill ate some pizza," but it is equally wrong to use "I" in the object position, as in "There is tension between Ted and I." This last usage is very common, but the proposition "between" indicates that "me" must be used here.

The most counterintuitive situation arises when we have a comparative sentence, like "Rick is taller than she." She? This sounds wrong to many native speakers, but always remember to end such sentences in your head with "is." "Rick is taller than she is" sounds perfectly correct, and it will guide you to the correct form in these comparative situations. Finally, being verbs can be tricky, as in this odd-sounding sentence: "The thief is he!" "Him" sounds more normal, but when we see a being verb between the subject and the pronoun, the pronoun must be in the subjective case. To remember this, or even to make it sound right, simply reverse the order of the sentence: "He is the thief!" sounds perfectly correct, and it means the same thing. Remember that the word "is" or any form of the verb acts as an equals sign between the subject and the thing it is likened to, so this reversal is completely valid.