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"Between you and I" is a phrase that has drawn considerable interest from linguists, grammarians, and stylists, since it appears to contain a grammatical error: according to many grammarians and stylists a pronoun in a prepositional phrase in English is supposed to be in the oblique case—that is, according to many authors, Shakespeare, who used the phrase in ''The Merchant of Venice'' (1596–98), should have written "between you and me". Shakespeare's use of the phrase has been described as a grammatical error "of unsurpassable grossness", although whether it was in fact an error is a matter of debate. Modern linguists for the most part agree that "between you and I" is an example of grammatical hypercorrection, though there is still disagreement on whether the phrase itself in today's language is grammatically correct or not. ==Shakespeare's use, responses== "Between you and I" occurs in Act 3, scene 2, of ''The Merchant of Venice'', in a letter written in prose by Antonio, the titular character, to his friend Bassanio: :Sweet Bassanio, ... all debts are cleared between you and I if I might but see you at my death. Shakespeare was far from the only one to use the phrase: writer and critic Henry Hitchings points at usage in William Congreve's ''The Double Dealer'' (1693) and in Mark Twain's letters. Otto Jespersen found similar examples ("pronouns or nouns plus ''I'' after a preposition", in Robert J. Menner's words) in Ben Jonson, John Bunyan, Charles Dickens, and Graham Greene, and Menner adds Noah Webster, Samuel Pepys, Thomas Middleton, and others.〔 Various critics have commented on Shakespeare's line. American writer Russell Baker, in his "Observer" column in ''The New York Times'', considered it a grammatical error—"grammatically, of course, Shakespeare was wrong". He said Shakespeare probably "slipped accidentally": "My guess is that he was writing along rapidly, maybe at the end of the day when he was tired, was wishing he'd never come up with this ''Merchant of Venice'' idea, and eager to get over to the Mermaid Tavern for a beer with Jonson and Burbage". Menner, in a 1937 article in ''American Speech'', says that "it is evident that the phrase ''you and I'' was often felt to be grammatically indivisible, perhaps of frequency, and that we "cannot even be sure that 'between you and I' was originally hypercorrect in the Elizabethan age"; Menner does not say whether he believes the usage to be correct or incorrect.〔 Others do not accuse Shakespeare of grammatical incorrectness: sociologist Robert Nisbet criticizes "word snobs" who condemn the phrase, and lexicographer and OED editor Robert Burchfield states that what is incorrect for us wasn't necessarily incorrect for Shakespeare: "grammatical assumptions were different then",〔 a view shared by philologist and grammarian Henry Sweet. However, Bryan A. Garner, who writes on usage and (especially legal) language, writes that even if the phrase was not incorrect for Shakespeare, it is and should be considered incorrect today, and cites linguist Randolph Quirk: "It is true that Shakespeare used both (you and I' as well as 'between you and me' ), but that did not make it any more correct".〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Between you and I」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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