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I was talking about this with a friend yesterday, though the actual example was "thou and I", which sounded weird. I thought it should be "thee and I", due to "I" being a subject pronoun. I eventually conceded, but I'm still not sure - could you say (arguably) that "thou/you", when paired with "I", is an object? Or are they still both subjects?

Similarly, is "it" still the subject in a sentence like "the dog and it"?

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  • "the dog and it" is not a sentence. No verb. – John Lawler Apr 18 '17 at 23:53
  • "And" is a coordinating conjunction, not a preposition or a subordinating conjunction. The subject of e.g. "Thou and I are happy" is the coordinate noun phrase "Thou and I." Both "thou" and "I" are part of the subject and so prescriptively take subjective case. The items coordinated by "and" always play the same grammatical role and aside from elision, and some weird phenomena that show up in colloquial speech, they generally take the same form as if they were used independently. – herisson Apr 18 '17 at 23:56
  • Conjunctions like "and," which coordinate like phrases, should be distinguished from prepositions like "with." Prepositions do not coordinate like phrases: a preposition takes a complement (the phrase that follows the preposition, also called the "object" of the preposition) which is standardly put in the objective case, and the preposition together with its complement forms a prepositional phrase that can modify a preceding noun phrase that has its own, independent case. That is why e.g. "I, with thee, will go for a walk" is correct." – herisson Apr 19 '17 at 0:02
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    @sumelic, How do your supporting and opposing comments go together? In one comment you are saying this is a possibly duplicate question, and in other comments (they can't simply be called comments; they are answer-like) you are answering the duplicate question! – mahmud k pukayoor Apr 19 '17 at 1:25
  • @mahmudkoya: the existing answers to the other question already talk about the case of coordinated pronouns. – herisson Apr 19 '17 at 3:47
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Any case other than nominative/subjective (i.e. dative, accusative/objective, etc.) requires

"me, us, thee, him, her, them, and whom"

to be used in place of

"I, we, thou, he, she, they, who."

You (plural; variants include "y'all" and "youse guys," but they're colloquial and I wouldn't recommend using them unless you're absolutely sure you know what you're doing) is an exception. It remains unchanged regardless of the case.

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  • TL;DR: "Thou and I" is correct, "thee and I" is wrong. – Scott Apr 19 '17 at 3:52

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