blacknomi said:
Both of you are right. (Correct)
You both are right. (Correct)
You are both right. (Correct)
I feel a bit frustrated(no bother at all, I mean) when explaining why this doesn't sound natural.
"Both you are right." :?:
Is there anyone can tell?
This is an interesting question. I'd like to see if I can help here.
When "both" functions as a subject in combination with a pronoun, it is followed by "of" and the pronoun is an object pronoun.
When "both" functions as a word that modifies - determiner or quantifier - then, of course, it would
not be followed by "of".
Thus, it would not sound natural to say "Both you are right." It sounds more natural to say "Both of you are right."
It could also sound unnatural because given that "both" can function as a
pronoun, maybe it doesn't sound quite right when used to modify a
pronoun, even though as a modifier it would not be a pronoun.
Thus, once again, we can say that "both of you" sounds better than "both you".
Both
of you are right. - That's good.
Both you are right. - That seems a bit odd to me, but still kind of okay.
I checked Google, and it seems that "both" and "you" do not occur in that way. They do occur side by side, but not in the way that they do in your example sentence.
We could say, "Both David and Steven are right." There we have the same grammatical form, but we don't have "both" modifying a pronoun.
Now, let's think about this: "Both of us are right." okay - However, "Both us are right." not okay.
Using "you" with "both" can sound tricky because "you" is both an object pronoun and a subject pronoun.
Compare again:
Both of them are right. - okay
Both them are right. - not okay
Does that clear things up at all?