The substitution of who for whom in the objective case, just noticed, is typical of a general movement toward breaking down all case distinctions among the pronouns, where they make their last stand in English and its dialects. This movement, of course, is not peculiar to vulgar American; nor is it of recent beginning. So long ago as the fifteenth century the old clear distinction between ye, nominative, and you, objective, disappeared, and today the latter is used in both cases. Sweet says that the phonetic similarity between ye and thee, the objective form of the true second singular, was responsible for this confusion.[1] At the start ye actually went over to the objective case, and the usage thus established shows itself in such survivors of the period as harkee (hark ye) and look ye. In modern spoken English, indeed, you in the objective often has a sound far more like that of ye than like that of you, as, for example, in "how do y' do?" and in American its vowel takes the neutral form of the e in the definite article, and the word becomes a sort of shortened yuh. But whenever emphasis is laid upon it, you becomes quite distinct, even in American. In "I mean you," for example, there is never any chance of mistaking it for ye.
In Shakespeare's time the other personal pronouns of the objective case threatened to follow you into the nominative, and there was a compensatory movement of the nominative pronouns toward the objective. Lounsbury has collected many examples.[2] Marlowe used "is it him you seek?" " 'tis her I esteem" and "nor thee nor them shall want"; Fletcher used " 'tis her I admire"; Shakespeare himself used "that's me." Contrariwise, Webster used "what difference is between the duke and I?" and Greene used "nor earth nor heaven shall part my love and I." Krapp has unearthed many similar examples from the Restoration dramatists.[3] Etheredge used "'tis them," "it may be him," "let you and I" and "nor is it me"; Matthew Prior, in a famous couplet, achieved this:
