[David]

Originally Posted by AliP

Sadly, I don't know all the ins and outs of the English language, but the following has always bothered me. Thing is...I don't even know if it is bad grammar. Could someone who is schooled in perfect grammar tell me if the following is wrong?

Songbird: "but most of all, I wish it from myself."

Nothing wrong with that, Ali. We can parse it: "I" is the subjuct, "wish" the verb (here transitive), "it" the direct object of the verb, "from myself" a prepositional phrase that functions adverbially here, modifying the manner of "wish." When a pronoun functions as the object of a preposition in a prepositional phrase ("between me & Stevie," "for you," "under her," "to him & her"), the pronoun should be in the accusative case ("me," "you," "him," "her," "it," "us," "them"). But here there's a reflexive pronoun -- "myself" -- which is perfectly acceptable (grammatically it stands in the same case relation to the preposition as an accusative pronoun does) because "I" precedes it & thus allows it to function emphatically. Christine could just as properly have written "I wish it from me," but that strikes native-English-speaking ears as not quite idiomatic.

I'm also a bit embarassed because in many of the solecisms David posted, I can't see what's wrong?

My list was boring -- just the usual list of usage-guide blunders: "can't help but" should be either "I can't help feeling" or "I can't but feel." The rest are ordinary: "like" as a conjunction, double negatives ("I cared not for love nor money" should be "I cared not for love or money" -- the "not" applies to both "love" & "money"), wrong verb with the subjunctive ("If I was a child" should be "If I were a child" because the statement is not factual but a wish or a desire), "lay" for "lie" ("As I lay here in the darkness" would be correct only if the statement were in the past tense) & "a couple looks" should be "a couple of looks" because "couple" is a noun, not an adjective, & so requires the preposition.