grammaticality - Is it correct to say, "Send it me?"



I'm a native speaker, but I'm a bit of a language lover and I'm afraid some other grammatical structures have encroached on my use of English. Another native English speaker looked at me funny the other day while we were talking about a document when I asked her to "send it me".


If I were speaking German, I could say



Schicken Sie es mir



or



Schicken Sie es nach mir



Basically, the preposition is optional because the inflection and position imply its relationship. Can I do the same thing in English? It wouldn't be inflection in this case, but can position imply the relationship such that the preposition isn't necessary?


I've said it out loud a lot of times in my head, but it sounds natural to me.



Answer



Let us presume that it is alright to drop the preposition so that grammatical propriety should allow you to express



  • Send it me.


Then you would have to solve the problem of ambiguity. Inspect the following cases.




  • Send me there.



    • Send {object} to {destination}.




  • Send it a kill signal.



    • Send {destination} {object}.

    • I asked my colleague to send a hung process a kill-signal to terminate it.




  • Send him me.



    • {Send him to me}?

    • Or, {Send to him, me} ?




Then, let's look at the following progression.



  • Send me {the document}.

  • Send me {it}.

  • Send {the document} {my information}.

  • Send {the document} {me}.

  • Send it me.


However, your paralleling your English usage with German is not precise. The two grammatical situations are dissimilar.


While German retains the difference between accusative and dative, English does not. First, pardon my deficiency in German comprehension.



  • Sie = nominative perpetrator

  • es = accusative package

  • mir = dative destination = implied to-me


Since each word is well-encapsulated, the order would not make a difference in the meaning:



  • {verb} {perpetrator} {package} {destination}

  • {verb} {package} {perpetrator} {destination}

  • {verb} {package} {destination} {perpetrator}

  • {package} {destination} {perpetrator} {verb}


Such that, due to the dative vs accusative attributes of each entity, the meaning stays the same whether you say it prosaically or awkwardly:



  • {schicken Sie es mir}

  • or {schicken Sie mir es}

  • or even {schicken mir es Sie}


Whilst German has retained sufficient declension morphemes to allow it to be used synthetically in many case, English has devolved into mostly analytic usage where word proximity, order and context of the phrase has to be analysed for the meaning of a phrase.


Case in point


In English, we would not know if a pronoun is used datively or accusatively, which is the cause of the ambiguity. Which is why it is best for you to stick in the preposition, and conform to the principle of proximity:



  • send to her his mail.

  • send it to his mail.

  • send it from his mail.

  • send to his mail to her.


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