| 词组 | let |
| 释义 | let 1. See leave, let. 2. Let, let's. There is a modicum of published opinion about let and let's used as imperatives that is concerned with the case—nominative or objective—of a following pronoun. Besides case, the problem is seen by some as also involving redundancy. Though the commentators have been at the subject since the 1920s—even Fowler 1926 made his contribution—they have not reached any consistent conclusions. We must turn, then, to a few serious grammarians—mostly to Jespersen 1909-49 but also to Quirk et al. 1985—for an insight or two. Back in Middle English the first-person imperative with let—"let us go," to use Jespersen's example— began to compete with the older form, "go we." (The two can be found side by side in Chaucer—there's an example at let in the OED—and in Shakespeare). As the us shows, the objective case of the pronoun followed let. Sometime around the middle of the 16th century the nominative pronoun begins to appear. Jespersen has an example from the play Ralph Roister Doister (ca. 1553): • Let all these matters passe, and we three sing a song. The OED has a 17th-century version of Malory with a "let we ... ," and our files include a modern instance from Trinidad: • "... a restaurant in Queen Street way we cud get good dhal pourri and chicken curry, let we go." — Samuel Selvon, A Brighter Sun, 1952 But the nominative is much more common when there are two members joined by and: • ... let thee and I go on —John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress, 1678 (in Jespersen) • ... let my dear and I talk the matter over —George Farquhar, The Beaux Stratagem, 1707 (in Jespersen) The two members are often in apposition to us but are still nominative: • ... let us make a covenant, I and thou —Genesis 31:44 (AV), 1611 • Let us go then, you and I —T. S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," 1917 There are a couple of related constructions not involving us: • Let fortune go to hell for it, not I —Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, 1597 • Let He who made thee answer that —Lord Byron, Cain, 1821 (in Jespersen) Jespersen calls this last an instance of "relative attraction" because of the influence of who, and says that later editors changed He to Him. The pattern persists in modern English; here, for instance, is a comic-strip paraphrase of a famous passage (John 8:7) of the King James Bible: • Let he who is without sin cast the first stone —Joe Martin, "Mister Boffo," 25 Oct. 1986 The reason for the appearance of nominative pronouns in place of the objective in all these constructions, says Jespersen, is that the pronoun has come to be perceived as the subject of the following infinitive rather than the object of let. He calls it a notional or virtual subject. The construction is not peculiar to English; Jespersen finds it with both nominative and objective pronouns in Danish, Norwegian, and Dutch—languages cognate with English. And then we have let's. This contraction of let us is found only with the imperative use of let. It dates back at least to Shakespeare's time: • If you deny to dance, let's hold more chat —Love's Labour's Lost, 1598 By the 20th century let's is frequently treated as a unit, rather than as a contraction, and then it takes a following pronoun. When the pronoun is us, the construction is criticized as redundant, especially by the earlier commentators. Quirk et al. 1985 characterizes let's us as "familiar American English." Let's can also be followed by a pair of pronouns in either the nominative or the objective case; the constructions occur in both American and British English. • Let's you and I take 'em on for a set —William Faulkner, Sartoris, 1929 (in OED Supplement) • ... let's you and I go together —Arthur Wing Pinero, The Benefit of the Doubt, 1895 (in Jespersen) • Let's you and me duck out of here —John D. MacDonald, The Brass Cupcake, 1950 (in OED Supplement) • ... the resulting photograph was really amusing. The caption under it read, or so Liz quipped: "Lady Bird, after this is over, let's you and me go out and have a drink." —Lady Bird Johnson, A White House Diary, 1970 The commentators on this construction concern themselves solely with the propriety of the nominative-case pronouns; Evans 1957 points out that not one of them observes that either you and me or you and I after let's is just as redundant as us. Now, what are we to make of all this? The main point is, as the evidence from Ralph Roister Doister to the present shows, that these are idiomatic constructions— no matter what the case of the pronoun—found almost exclusively in spoken English. You can use whichever of them sounds right to you wherever you would use speech forms in writing. You will probably not need any of them in anything you write that is at all removed from speech. 3. The negative of let's is formed in three ways: let's not, which is widely used; don't let's, which is chiefly found in British English; and let's don't, which is an Americanism. Nickles 1974 terms this last an outright illiteracy. This form is typical of speech and casual writing, of course, but Nickles's characterization of it will not do, as this example from one of the most resolutely literary men of his time shows: • In all events, let's don't celebrate it until it has done something —Alexander Woollcott, letter, 26 Jan. 1918 |
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