#11: Pronouns

"A pronoun is a word used in place of one or more nouns." (Warriner's 5) But don't write the pronouns off. Just think how monotonous writing would be if we always had to call things by their proper names or had to show possessions with a prepositional phrase starting with "of" not to mention asking questions and avoiding repetition would get a lot harder without pronouns.

Let's play a game of spot the pronouns in the following examples.

• Solving the transportation problems of a major urban area challenges those who are responsible for it.
• How can anyone correct all of the drawbacks in a city whose transportation system is old?
• Few of the experts who are studying the problems see private cars as part of their solution.
• Rather, they are a major part of the problem, to judge by most of what we read.
• The pollution, economic waste, and extreme overcrowding that now prevail are what experts question.

There are fifteen in those five sentences. If you found less than that, keep reading.

The word the pronoun replaces is called the antecedent of the pronoun. This is important because logical context means the pronoun used much match the antecedent: single pronouns for singular antecedents, masculine or feminine where appropriate.

So list the pronouns you know. I'm going to bet a virtual quarter that your list looks like this:

And if you have ever studied a foreign language that table looks familiar too. If it matches your list, congratulations, you know all the personal pronouns and we can move onto the other types: possessive, reflexive, intensive, relative, interrogative, demonstrative, and indefinite.

Another small detail about personal pronouns before we move into the other types: the above list shows both nominative and objective cases of the pronoun. You use the nominative (I, you, she, he, it, we, you, they) case as the subject of the verb, a predicate complement, in apposition with the subject of a verb, and as the complement of an infinitive. The objective (me, you, her, him, us, them) case is used as the object of indirect object of a verb, the subject of an infinitive, the objective of an infinitive, and the object of a preposition (Shertzer 14 – 16).

Possessive

Possessive pronouns are used before a noun the same way adjectives are used to limit the meaning of the noun and to show the relationship. There's a big difference in the parking lot between my car and his car, even if the cars are the same color, make, model, and year.

Reflexive and Intensive

When personal pronouns are combined with the ending –self or –selves, they are changed into reflexive or intensive pronouns depending on their use.

Reflexively: Carmen hurt herself.
Intensively: Carmen herself was not hurt.

Reflexive turns the action back on the subject of the sentence. Intensive puts emphasis on the subject.

A common mistake is using this form when you should use the personal pronoun.

Wrong: The principal gave the paper to Holden and myself.
Correct: The principal gave the paper to Holden and me.

Relative

Relative pronouns are used to introduce subordinate clauses (clauses which cannot stand alone and are used as nouns or modifiers).

Examples: The people who live there are on vacation.
Do you know that women whose car was stolen?

Who is the only relative pronoun that changes its form to indicate case (who, whose, whom, whoever, whomever). Before its case can be determined, the function it plays in a sentence must be decided.

Who or Whom:

1. The school board interviewed all the candidates _____ applied. – The missing word is the subject of its clause so you would use the nominative case who.
2. Dr. Benson is the surgeon _____ we recommended. – The missing word is the object of the verb so you would use the objective case whom.
3. All the men with _____ he worked were experienced. – The missing word is the object of a preposition so you would use the objective case.
4. We do not know _____ to invite as next month's speaker. – The missing word is the subject of an infinitive so you would use the objective case.

And native speakers mangled this all the time. I recommend the first chapter in Woe Is I by Patricia T. O'Conner for further study if this error creeps into your writing a lot.

Interrogative

Interrogative pronouns are used in questions, taking the place of the antecedent that is usually the answer of the question.

Examples:Who lives in that house now?
What was the name of the book?

Demonstrative

Demonstrative pronouns are used to point out people or things.

Indefinite

Pronouns that do not fall into any other classifications are called indefinite pronouns. Most express the idea of quantity. The following list is the most commonly used.

Many indefinite pronouns can also function as adjectives. It depends on how the word is used in the sentence.

Pronoun: Both of us have been assigned special work.
Adjective: Both clerks were busy.

They can also give headaches when trying to make sure gender and number of other pronouns agree. Rather than detail all the ways it is possible to goof this up, I recommend Woe Is I by Patricia T. O'Conner again if the grammar check on your word processing program flags the indefinite pronouns you use.

Homework

Now that you've been introduced to all types of pronouns, try picking them out of these sentences.

• Solving the transportation problems of a major urban area challenges those who are responsible for it.
• Few of the experts who are studying the problems see private cars as part of their solution.
• Rather, they are a major part of the problem, to judge by most of what we read.
• The pollution, economic waste, and extreme overcrowding that now prevail are what experts question.
• As everybody can see, a five-passenger car occupied by only its driver wastes enough passenger space to remove four other cars from the streets.
• Convenient, efficient mass transportation is what most see as the solution, but even this has no lack of problems.
• Planners themselves would like to redesign the whole transportation system, but who can achieve that?
• How can anyone correct all of the drawbacks in a city whose transportation system is old?
• Only imaginative effort, combined with practical patience, will succeed—and many of us seen to have neither.
• We ourselves, wherever each of us travels, are the stakes in this problematic game.

The answers are here.