Pronoun case double-header

In an interview with Xerox CEO Ursula Burns on NPR’s Morning Edition this morning (“If You Don’t Transform, You’re Stuck”), two pronoun case finds: an accusative whom “by position” and a nominative conjoined object I.

On Burns:

Xerox CEO Ursula Burns began her career with the company in 1980 as a summer intern. In 2009, she became the first African-American woman to lead a Fortune 500 company.

Accusative by position (in this case, following the P for, though the pronoun functions as a predicative):

“What I found there was an organization that accepted me for whom I was.”

Non-standard but common.

NomConjObj (now so common that I’m reluctant to label it as non-standard):

[about her mother] “… to send my sister, my brother, and I to Catholic school”

 

6 Responses to “Pronoun case double-header”

  1. the ridger Says:

    NomConjObj strikes me as colloquial rather than nonstandard.

  2. Greg Lee Says:

    “NomConjObj”? I don’t recognize the language.

  3. blue sky Says:

    Speaking of Fortune 500 CEOs: while I was looking up Bill Clinton’s speeches, I caught a NomConjObj from Roger Johnson, CEO of Western Digital. In 1992, Johnson broke with the Republican Party to support Clinton. Here he is introducing Clinton at a campaign rally:

    What is important to Kathryn and I is that we get George Bush and Bill Clinton and Ross Perot to tell us specifically in detail what it is they’re going to do to solve the variety of big problems facing our country.

    (“Kathryn” is Kathryn Thompson, a real estate developer with fund-raising connections to Johnson.)

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