*blinks* Now I'm confused. - Edit 1
Before modification by Legolas at 21/05/2010 01:22:18 AM
For the first hypothetical question, the unspoken verb "want" in the answer has as its direct object "me." The subject is left unstated in the response.
How on earth does that work? After the question "Who wants a cookie" (in which I think we can agree that "who" is subject, and "a cookie" direct object), surely the long form of the answer would be "I want a cookie", with "I" subject and "a cookie" direct object, just like in the question. How on earth do you answer that question with any sentence having "me" as a direct object? "The cookie wants me"?
For the second, that's a different matter, although usually it approximates the form of a direct object in that stilted expression.
For this one the grammar is less clear, I agree. In Indo-European languages with cases like Latin and German, predicates are nominative, but if one is opposed to copying rules from other languages, could argue that English doesn't have to follow that.
What's interesting about "It's me" is that Dutch and German reverse the order and change the verb ("Ik ben het / Ich bin's"
, with "I" as subject and "it" as predicate. Somehow English sides with the Romance languages on that one - "it is I" is old-fashioned, but "I am it" makes no sense whatsoever in English (or at least not if it's supposed to mean "it's me".