But also contributed a great deal to the conceptual development of the grammar. Last but far from least, we express our gratitude to Delia Summers, the Director of Longman Dictionaries, as prime mover of this project who, at a time when the idea was as strange to us as to the rest of the world, inspired us to plan a truly corpus-based grammar, and persuaded us to turn that vision into a reality. | 340 NOUNS PRONOUNS ANO THE SIMPLE NOUN PHRASE Il A I think I would have dumped him overboard then B Oh And me. And me May. conv Summary of factors affecting pronoun case choice To summarize accusative pronoun forms are used in a wider range of contexts than nominative forms. Accusative forms are generally used in conversation after be after as and than frequently in coordinated noun phrases in subject position and normally in peripheral and non-integrated noun phrases. In addition they are of course the regular choice in the typical accusative positions . as an object in a clause and as a complement in a prepositional phrase. In fact the only position where nominative forms are regularly used in conversation is as a simple subject occurring next to the verb of the clause. Fiction exhibits a more conservative use of the case forms with a fairly high frequency of the nominative after be chiefly in cleft constructions and after as and than while nominative forms are almost universal in coordinated noun phrases in subject position. Choices in news are fairly similar to those in fiction. Academic prose which has a very low overall frequency of pronouns provides few examples of the relevant forms with not a single example of the accusative being attested in the LSWE Corpus. Possessive pronouns Corresponding to the personal pronouns there is a series of possessive determiners and possessive pronouns see Table in note that its is only used as a determiner . Despite the term possessive they are used for a much wider range of relationships than possession just like the genitive of nouns . Possessive determiners were covered in we deal here with possessive pronouns which are typically used where the head noun is recoverable from the preceding context in the same way as elliptic genitives cf. Could be - the same car as - ours conv The house will be hers you see when they are properly divorced. coNvf Their eyes met his coolly .
