You and Me both

Question

Which is correct:

Me and Bob have both reviewed the fees.

Bob and I have both reviewed the fees.

I ask this because it sounds more grammatically correct to say Me and Bob when using the word both because you are clearly demonstrating that it was a combined project between two people. Whereas the word I is truly singular and not inclusive as a group effort.

It's as though I've made the subject of both people together and in using the word both have altered the idea that You and I is correct here.

Answer 1

You would use I for the subject of the sentence and not Me. The fact that the subject is plural is not relevant. The fact the the tense is past or past perfect or present perfect is not relevant. The inclusion of both is not relevant.

If we take the first sentence and discard words two through five, we are left with:

"Me have reviewed the fees."

Clearly this sentence both sounds ungrammatical and is ungrammatical.

The extra verbiage is masking the flaw to your "ear".

Answer 2

"Bob and I have both reviewed the fees." is the grammatically correct statement.

Allow me to provide a brief partial lesson in English grammar.

English has three cases (some might argue differently, but for all practical purposes this is it):

1. Nominative (in a general sense the active in the sentence). Nominative pronouns are: I, you (singular), we, you (plural), who.

2. Objective (in a general sense the receiver of the action). Objective pronouns are: Me, you (singular), us, you (plural), whom.

3. Reflexive (in a very simplified sense of when actor is also recipient of the action): myself, yourself (single individual), ourself (all collectively e.g a Union)/ourselves (all collectively e.g. Union members), yourselves (plural individuals).

One of the rules of correct English grammar, is when there is a list, as in the examples, the reference to oneself is always last. This applies to either case.

It should now be clear what is wrong with, "Me and Bob have both reviewed the fees." The list of nouns is in the wrong order, AND the wrong case has been used.

Answer 3

It's complicated.

Both are correct (for certain definitions of "correct" and depending on the context). The first is more natural to me in normal speech. I would use the second in formal writing (because it has been drilled into me, not because it is natural). So it depends on the register you wish to communicate in.

The rules for pronoun case in coordinated structures like this are governed by many things. For example, whether they are both pronouns and, if not, whether the pronoun comes first or second.

There is a fairly detailed investigation in this thesis: “Me and her” meets “he and I”: Case, person, and linear ordering in English coordinated pronouns by Thomas Grano

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Edit: Having finally had some time to look into this a bit more, I have found some interesting discussion on the Language Log blog:

The entry for me in Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage notes that:

... While traditional opinion prescribes someone and I for subject use — I and someone seems a bit impolite — in actual practice we also find me and someone and someone and me […]

They then provide some data on the relative frequency of the various forms in some corpora and go on the speculate on the mechanisms ("rules") behind it. For example:

One theory would be that in some varieties of English me is an emphatic form rather than (or in addition to) an accusative form. Thus in the same way that French has "Jean et moi" rather than "*Jean et je", this kind of English has "John and me" rather than "*John and I".

(It is interesting to note that in French, moi is standard rather than je. I'm not sure what that says about the "logical" arguments presented in the other answers.)

One direction towards a solution might be to adopt the theory put forward in Joseph Emonds, "Grammatically deviant prestige constructions", 1986, and adopted e.g. by Nicholas Sobin, "Agreement, Default Rules, and Grammatical Viruses", Linguistic Inquiry 29(2) 1997. This theory says that "nominative" pronouns in coordinate subjects are actually ungrammatical in English ("grammatically deviant") and must be introduced by extra-grammatical editing rules ("grammatical viruses", in Sobin's terminology).

1) The natural state of all pronouns in coordinate subjects is accusative.

2) There is a rule (of prestigious deviance) turning "and me" into "and I".

There are many other references to information on the subject, and an interesting discussion in the comments section.