Could someone please help me to understand the following sentence from wren and martin.
It is a common mistake to use I for me, when the pronoun is connected by a conjunction (and, or) with some other word in the accusative case.
Study the following correct sentences :-
The presents are for you and me (Not, I)
My uncle asked my brother and me(Not, I) to dinner
I did not understand how the examples follow the reasoning given by the book.
@Tarun is quite right, the correct form is easy to determine by considering how the sentence would be constructed if the other person were not involved. Unfortunately there is a tendency for native English speakers to get this wrong in both directions. Working class speakers will often say things of the form "Me and my brother went to town" when they would never say "Me went to town". Some speakers of dialects from the English West Country will say "Give that to I" but that form is never used in the rest of the UK. However in the late 19th or early 20th centuries the aspiring middle classes began to be taught that the "Me and my brother" or even the more polite "My brother and me" form is always 'low', 'working class' and incorrect regardless of context. This leads to well educated people saying things like "My father built a tree house for my brother and I" (Bear Grylls on television) when they would never say "My father built a tree house for I" unless they were from the West Country working class. I have noticed that this has spread to American English for some reason and I even heard the Queen's niece Lady Sarah Chatto using it in a television documentary a few weeks back. When it's got into the speech of the royal family perhaps there is no hope of ever getting it right again!
