At 9:04 am +0200 17/9/99, Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:
.......
>
>Well, the phenomenon causing the hypercorrection does have to do with
>cases, or rather the lack of them, according to what I read: In the
>non-prestige sociolects, there is no grammatical case at all, just a
>rule that a single personal pronoun as subject just before the finite
>verb takes a special form: 'I run' but 'Me and Bob run' (and 'Bob sees
>me').

But this some form of case differentiation; in the first we have a singular
subject; in the second the subject is plural.  'I' happens to be nominative
_singular_ so we don't use 'I' when it forms part of a compound plural
subject. And don't forget that all the personal pronouns, except 'you',
have two forms (besides possessives). There is case; it just works
differently from both Classical Latin & from what the prescriptivists think
English should have.

>And that is why the prescriptivists find their rule applied more
>widely than they wish: Not because their victims are pretentious,

But they are - me & Charlie meets them most days  :)

Ray.