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When telling a story about myself from the past, I have found myself in an internal debate over whether the correct way to segue into the present is:
That was me twelve years ago.
Or:
That was I twelve years ago.
My instincts tell me the first is correct (object pronoun after a verb and it sounds better to my ears). But, I'm not sure if pronouns after linking verbs should be object pronouns. Which is correct?
Professor Geoffrey Pullum has this to say:
Myth: Expressions like "It was me" and "She was taller than him" are incorrect; the correct forms are "It was I" and "She was taller than he."
Pullum responds: The forms with nominative pronouns sound ridiculously stuffy today. In present-day English, the copular verb takes accusative pronoun complements and so does "than." My advice would be this: If someone knocks at your door, and you say "Who's there?" and what you hear in response is "It is I," don't let them in. It's no one you want to know.
"People have been living in fear of grammar rules that don't exist," said Pullum, who wrote The Cambridge Grammar with Rodney Huddleston of the University of Queensland, Australia. "We're going into the 21st century carrying grammar books from the 20th century that haven't shaken off grammar myths from the 19th century," said Pullum.
My inclination is to say they're both correct since in either case your intended meaning is unambiguous. My ultra-descriptivist streak aside, however, I would think that the second is prescriptively more "correct," since you're using your first person pronoun as a predicate nominative.
