Here is the sentence in question:"Janelle, Dave and I need to have a meeting."I or me?The following website is instructive:QuoteThe difference between "I" and "me" in English is the difference between the function of a Subject or Object in a sentence. The Subject of a sentence is what the sentence is about and for that reason is usually the first noun or noun phrase in the sentence. It usually occurs before the verb, "I like Fernando," and never after it, "Fernando likes I.""Me" is the Object form of "I," just as "him" is the Object form of "he." The Object form is used after the verb but also after prepositions: "Fernando likes me" or "Fernando likes working with him."As we saw above, we cannot use "I" and "me" randomly; we must observe its function in the sentence. This applies to all the personal pronouns.Coordinated noun constructions like "you and I" change nothing. It is equally incorrect to say "Me worked late" and "Maureen and me worked late." And it is equally incorrect to say "Fred looked at I" and "Fred looked at Maureen and I." So why do we say things like "Fred saw Maureen and I"?A common ungrammatical dialectal construct in U.S. English is "Me and Maureen ate all our kohlrabi." Grammarians who try to write rules for language rather than describe the ones that are already there, "prescriptive grammarians," found two problems with such constructions. First, the Subject contains an Object pronoun: "me." Second, the placement of "me" before the name of someone else was at one time considered impolite. Of course, politesse has nothing to do with grammar, that is, what is right or wrong in speech. The result is that prescriptive grammar books used in U.S. schools for years have taught children to avoid constructions like "me and X" in favor of "X and I," where "X" represents any other noun or pronoun referring to a human being. They seldom make clear that this rule applies only in the Subject position. The critical grammatical rule, that "I" appears only in the Subject while "me" must be used in all Object positions gets lost in the concern for etiquette. So which is it?

"Janelle, Dave and I need to have a meeting."A very ambiguous sentence by the way.It could be stating that all three of them need to have a meeting,or it could be the third person telling Janelle that he (the third person) and Dave need to have a meeting.

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I vote for "I" as it's the subject.

Surprisingly few English sentences can be read by mechanical rules.Consider "I threw the stone at the window and it broke".Rarely do we mean the stone...

Hello.Time flies like an arrow.But fruit flies like a banana.Cunning linguists can be dangerous.Matthew

QuoteOriginally posted by: mdubuqueCunning linguists can be dangerous.Ah now you tell me. No wonder the ladies have been dying on me. Oh ok i see. For a moment.....

I believe it's suppose to be "Janelle, Dave and I need to have a meeting".Also, in my first semester English composition class, we were taught that to write well we should avoid the ambiguous use of words like "it" in the sentence below. The above sentence should be written as, "I threw the stone at the window and the window broke". QuoteOriginally posted by: DCFCSurprisingly few English sentences can be read by mechanical rules.Consider "I threw the stone at the window and it broke".Rarely do we mean the stone...

This is a very exciting subject and I will have some comments on the Ablative and Ablative Absolute on Sunday.At some point we should talk about the Imperative as well. For example, how does one distinguish between requests and commands?

QuoteOriginally posted by: trackstarThis is a very exciting subject and I will have some comments on the Ablative and Ablative Absolute tonight.At some point we should talk about the Imperative as well. For example, how does one distinguish between requests and commands?I was always taught that was what question marks and exclamation marks were for.

Those are indicators, yes, but the emphasis can cross over and may also be modified in several ways.To some one who is being annoying:"Could you please just cut it out?"Spoken in a stronger tone than a request."Kiss me, darling!"Spoken in a softer tone than a command, even though the "please" is implicit.The conditional tends to support a request rather than a command, but can be used sarcastically.

a nice thread to revive

QuoteOriginally posted by: trackstarThose are indicators, yes, but the emphasis can cross over and may also be modified in several ways.To some one who is being annoying:"Could you please just cut it out?"Spoken in a stronger tone than a request."Kiss me, darling!"Spoken in a softer tone than a command, even though the "please" is implicit.The conditional tends to support a request rather than a command, but can be used sarcastically.The way you have presented your examples in order interpret them as you do implying that tone makes the difference rather than grammar, you don't seem to have difficulty differentiating a request from a command -- so what's the problem?

I have something up my sleeve with regard to imperatives, but it is late now, so we will have to resume the grammatical fun and games tomorrow.