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If someone says, "I want to sit with you," is the response, "And I you," acceptable? I believe a better choice would be, "And I with you," but is "with" strictly necessary or does it just add clarity?

An existing question covers the correctness of the general use of "And I you," but in those examples "you" is the direct object. If omission of the verb is acceptable, can the preposition be omitted as well?

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  • As 'And I with you' is so formal as to be highfalutin, 'And I you' is not likely to be considered an acceptable deletion. It's pointless discussing the grammaticality or otherwise of things nobody says.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Mar 16, 2016 at 22:48
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    @EdwinAshworth It's pointless discussing the grammaticality or otherwise of things nobody says Wait. Isn't that ELU's charter?
    – deadrat
    Commented Mar 16, 2016 at 23:20
  • @deadrat It's usually the wordness of DIY candidate words that three people have decided they like.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Mar 16, 2016 at 23:25
  • And I with you sounds fine to me, but I certainly hear So do I more often.
    – Anonym
    Commented Mar 17, 2016 at 3:14

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According to The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (CGEL), the version without with is not grammatical.

Per chapter 15 "Coordination and supplementation", § 4.2 "Gapped coordination (Kim is an engineer and Pat a barrister)", p. 1338:

One limitation is that the antecedent cannot end with a preposition or infinitival to, so that the underlined items cannot be omitted in [9] even though they appear in the first clause too:

[9]   i  I went by car and Bill __ by bus.
                                   --
     ii  Kim was hoping to go to university and Pat __ to join the family business.
                                                       --

(where the "antecedent" is the part that the gap refers back to; "went" in the first example, "was hoping" in the second).

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"And I with you" sounds very formal.

"And I you" also sounds very formal, and is probably incorrect. It would be correct if the original statement was something like "I love you" (without any proposition "with").

You could say "I want to sit with you too", or in colloquial American English the response could simply be "Me too".

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