Disjunctive case - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

A disjunctive pronoun is a stressed

Stress (linguistics)

In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...

form of a personal pronoun

Personal pronoun

Personal pronouns are pronouns used as substitutes for proper or common nouns. All known languages contain personal pronouns.- English personal pronouns :English in common use today has seven personal pronouns:*first-person singular...

reserved for use in isolation or in certain syntactic contexts.

Examples and usage

Disjunctive pronominal forms are typically found in the following environments. The examples are taken from French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, which uses the disjunctive first person singular pronoun moi. The (sometimes colloquial) English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

translations illustrate similar uses of me as a disjunctive form.

in syntactically unintegrated disjunct
Disjunct (linguistics)
In linguistics, a disjunct is a type of adverbial adjunct that expresses information that is not considered essential to the sentence it appears in, but which is considered to be the speaker's or writer's attitude towards, or descriptive statement of, the propositional content of the sentence...

(or "dislocated") positions

Les autres s'en vont, mais moi, je reste.

The others are leaving, but me, I'm staying.

in elliptical construction
Elliptical construction
In linguistics, ellipsis or elliptical construction refers to the omission from a clause of one or more words that would otherwise be required by the remaining elements.-Overview:...

s ("sentence fragments") with no verb (e.g. short answers)

Qui veut du gâteau ? Moi.

"Who wants cake? Me.

Il est plus âgé que moi.

He is older than me.

in a coordination
Coordination (linguistics)
In linguistics, a coordination is a complex syntactic structure that links together two or more elements, known as conjuncts or conjoins. Coordinators are typically: "and" and "or"...

with a noun phrase or another pronoun

Mes parents et moi arrivons dans une heure.

Me and my parents are arriving in an hour.

in the main clause of a cleft sentence
Clefting
A cleft sentence is a complex sentence that has a meaning that could be expressed by a simple sentence. Clefts typically put a particular constituent into focus...

C'est moi que vous cherchez.

It's me that you're looking for.

after a preposition.

Comptez sur moi.

Count on me.

Disjunctive pronouns are often semantically restricted. For example, in a language with grammatical gender

Grammatical gender

Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...

, there may be a tendency to use masculine and feminine disjunctive pronouns primarily for referring to animate

Animacy

Animacy is a grammatical and/or semantic category of nouns based on how sentient or alive the referent of the noun in a given taxonomic scheme is...

entities.

Si l'on propose une bonne candidate, je voterai pour elle.

If someone proposes a good candidate, I'll vote for her.

Si l'on propose une bonne loi, *je voterai pour elle.

If someone proposes a good law, I'll vote for her (it).

"It's me"

In some languages, a personal pronoun has a form called a disjunctive pronoun, which is used when it stands on its own, or with only a copula, such as in answering to the question "Who wrote this page?" The natural answer for most English speakers in this context would be "me" (or "It's me"), parallel to moi (or C'est moi) in French. Unlike in French, however, where such constructions are considered standard, English pronouns used in this way have caused dispute. Some grammarians have argued and persuaded some educators that the correct answer should be "I" or "It is I" because "is" is a linking verb and "I" is a predicate nominative, and up until a few centuries ago spoken English used pronouns in the subjective case in such sentences. However, since English has lost noun inflection

Declension

In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...

and now relies on word order, using the objective case me after the verb be like other verbs seems very natural to modern speakers. The phrase "It is I" historically came from the Middle English

Middle English

Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....

"It am I" and the change from "am" to "is" was also a step towards fixing the SVO word order.

Examples and usage

"It's me"

See also