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Originally Posted by alienvoord  How can you say that for sure? |
Because they would not use that structure if they thought it was incorrect.
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According to Merriam-Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage, a hypothesis similar to CG's is advanced by Chomksy in Barriers in 1986. He argues that "between" can assign case only to the whole phrase and not to the constituents within it. This means that the items in the co-ordinated phrase are free to take subject or object case, or to be reflexives.
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It strikes me that this rule is a retroactive rule invented to excuse poor teaching. The chronological order of events would be thus:
1. "between" assigns case to all constituents of a coordinated object.
2. native speakers use objective pronouns where prescriptive rules demand subjective pronouns.
3. teachers attempt to correct speakers.
4. speakers overextend the prescriptive rule taught in step 3 and apply it to pronouns which should properly remain objective: they do this on the assumption that if "Mary and I" is more correct than "Mary and me" in one situation, it must therefore be correct in every other case.
5. Chomsky formulates an ad hoc rule which in fact was never followed by anyone, whether they consciously followed prescriptive rules or spoke naturally, until badly taught rules started to become misapplied.