"Me, as an artist, knows better" or "know better"? [closed]

I am confused how I should conjugate the verb with this construction, at the start of a sentence:

Me, as a X, [verb]...

Should I use the first or third person?

Solution 1:

"Me, as an artist, knows better” or “know better”?

I parse these commas as being parenthetical:

"Me (as an artist) knows better” or “know better”?

Parenthetical commas denote a removable phrase that leaves behind a grammatically correct sentence.

"Me knows better”

Ow!

“Me know better”

Ow!

"I know better"

Ah!

"I, as an artist, know better"

Sure ya do artsy boy. :)

Solution 2:

The other answer focuses on "correcting" the use of the accusative pronoun me to the nominative I in this construction, which of course will force the use of the first person agreement. To me the more interesting question is whether the sentence with the accusative is possible, and if it is, what agreement should be on the verb.

Personally, I have no problem with the sentence as given with the accusative pronoun, and the nominative form sounds overly stuffy (although certainly not unacceptable.) With that in mind, the third person agreement is required when the pronoun is accusative.

The reasons for this are very likely because the accusative pronoun is never a subject, but is an a presentential "topic" position. This is possibly the same position as left dislocated pronouns show up (as has been mentioned), and this explains why the accusative form of the pronoun is used.

So why the third person agreement and not first person? This is exactly the same pattern we find when accusative pronouns are linked to subject positions in cleft constructions:

1. It's me who is leaving early.
2. *It's me who am leaving early.

Even though the actual antecedent of the subject of the clause is leaving early is first person, the WH pronoun who is the element that is actually controlling the agreement here, and first person agreement is impossible. Now we know that this WH pronoun does not need to to be pronounced, because we can also say (3). that here is not pronominal here under most current syntactic analyses but is just the regular complementizer that.

3. It's me that is leaving early.

So an analysis of (3) would have an unpronounced WH pronoun connected to the subject of the clause that is leaving early, and controlling the third person agreement.

I think this is exactly what is going on in the sentence in question, i.e., it's more like a cleft construction with an unpronounced WH pronoun which controls third person agreement not first.

This isn't meant to invalidate the answers which discuss the I form; I just think that the sentence as given requires an analysis to the extent that native speakers actually say things like this.