More conjoined pronoun case counts
Language Log 2025-10-08
In earlier posts and comments ("Between you and I"; "Barriers between you and I"), there have been many opinions about the possibility of various English subject and object pronouns in the two positions of "between X and Y". So I've done a quick tally of counts from five of the English-language corpora at English-Corpora.org:
Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) News on the Web (NOW) Corpus of American Soap Operas The TV Corpus The Movie Corpus
(Though for now I've tested only the patterns in which Y = I/me.)
COCA NOW SOAP TV Movies between her and I 7 89 2 1 5 between her and me 35 119 29 47 16 between she and I 4 11 1 5 1 between she and me 0 0 0 0 2 between him and I 10 274 1 4 0 between him and me 84 411 53 76 64 between he and I 7 200 1 7 1 between he and me 0 3 0 0 2 between them and I 5 120 1 2 2 between them and me 23 138 2 4 9 between they and I 0 0 0 0 0 between they and me 0 0 0 0 0
Overall, there's a fairly consistent pattern, though it's not yet clear to me how to explain it. As expected, things seem slightly different across corpora; and the choice of her/she vs. him/he vs. them/they seems to generate slightly different I/me results.
Obviously, it would also be a good idea to look at the data from EEBO.
Historians, data scientists and grammarians are welcome to go at it.