"There's no one to blame, except for myself."
In the above sentence, would it be okay to delete the word "for"?
In the above sentence, would it be okay to delete the word "for"?
Except for myself
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I have no one to blame except myself.
There is no one to blame except me.
Do you want the explanation about prepositions and the oblique case?
There is no one to blame except me.
Do you want the explanation about prepositions and the oblique case?
ErylRavenwell
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ErylRavenwell
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I remember an old movie where Groucho hid in an oblique case to avoid buying a ticket on an ocean liner... or was that a steamer trunk? Let me reflect on it. Oh, my, now I think it was the reflexive case.
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And two hard-boiled eggs!
As English developed out of Anglo-Saxon and Norman French, the concept of nouns having a nominative and an oblique case was gradually lost. Except for personal pronouns.
"Who's the leader of the club that's made for you and me?"
"To whom do we Mouseketeers owe allegiance?"
So, in a sentence where one pronoun is in the nominative case (i.e., the subject of the sentence) and one pronoun is in the oblique case (i.e., the object of the sentence), you get:
"She had nobody to blame but him."
But when the two pronouns refer to the same individual(s), another principle kicks in--the principle of reflexivity. Pronomial reflexivity indicates that the object is affected by the subject. Because it carries more meaning, it trumps the oblique case. Thus you get:
"I had nobody to blame but myself."
But when you're beginning the sentence with the "dummy subject" ("There is") you use the oblique pronoun in order to indicate what the subject of the sentence is.
"There is nobody to blame but me."
I still don't see why "myself" should be wrong. It's not about subjects/syntax, it's about semantics. Consider:
a) There was nobody for him to blame but me.
b) There was nobody for me to blame but myself.
The semantic agent of the "blaming" appears in a prepositional phrase, but that's enough to justify the reflexive pronoun. Now I don't see why you can't viewb) There was nobody for me to blame but myself.
c) There was nobody to blame but myself,
as implying the "for me", so that it's equivalent with b) but two words shorter and no more confusing. I'd rather argue against the "rule" than against the usage, here.
To my mind, changing "There was nobody to blame but myself," to "There was nobody to blame but me," weakens the sentence by making it more general. The former suggests that I am looking for someone to blame, while the latter suggests that someone - possibly I, possibly someone else - is looking for someone to blame.
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H'm. I disagree, but that is an interesting and thoughtful argument about a case in which you feel semantics trump rules.
Sometimes the most strictly grammatical sentence is not the strongest sentence, I agree.
And I also agree that the sentences have different connotations, because of the implied reflexivity of "myself". In some contexts, the first sentence might well seem more appropriate: "I racked my brain trying to think of where the fault might lie. Was it Joan? Tom? After a while, I realized the truth. There was nobody to blame but myself."
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If this is somebody speaking,
"I blame myself."
"I'm the one at fault."
"There's nobody to blame but me."
will come across as ordinary speech.
"There's nobody to blame except (for) myself."
is likely to sound over-precise and stilted. This might be a character trying to sound 'upperclass' or 'educated'.
"I blame myself."
"I'm the one at fault."
"There's nobody to blame but me."
will come across as ordinary speech.
"There's nobody to blame except (for) myself."
is likely to sound over-precise and stilted. This might be a character trying to sound 'upperclass' or 'educated'.
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ICE, where does the term "oblique" come from? I've heard objective, I've heard accusative, but never oblique.
By the way, the genitive case still shows up nicely in modern English, though all-too-frequently misspelled.
By the way, the genitive case still shows up nicely in modern English, though all-too-frequently misspelled.
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"Oblique" is used in two-case systems to mean "everything that isn't the nominative."
This is true. Pronouns are so declension-happy!
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