Chapter 13: Pronouns The Teacher’s Grammar of English – Ron Cowan

Prepared by: Aziz DRIOUCH

Outline: - Definition.- Anaphora and Personal Pronouns.- Reflexive Pronouns.- Reciprocal Pronouns.- Possessive Pronouns.- Indefinite Pronouns.- Demonstrative pronouns.- Pronouns and Agreement.- Problems which EFL/ESL students have with pronouns.- Suggestions for teaching pronouns.

Definition:• a pronoun is a grammatical form that

substitutes in some way a NP or an entire clause.

Anaphora and Personal Pronouns:

• A- Anaphora pronouns:• Anaphora is the connection between

pronouns and their antecedents. There are 4 types of anaphora:

• 1- Intersentential anaphora : when the pronoun and its antecedent are in separate sentences. - Don’t show your ideas to James. He might steal them.

• 2- Intrasentential anaphora :when the pronoun and its antecedent are in the same sentence. - I cooked a nice pancake and eat it on the spot.

• 3- Forward anaphora: when the antecedents precede the pronoun. - Jason took Emily to the library and picked her up an hour later.

• 4- Backward anaphora: when the pronoun precedes the antecedent. - Since they are so noisy, I asked the boys to leave the room.

• B- Personal Pronouns:

Subject personal pronouns

Object personal pronouns

I you She/He/ ItWeyou They

Me You Him/Her/ItUSYou Them

• In certain structures, native speakers ‘ use of personal pronouns is more variable than the prescreptive rule.

In predicate nominals, and according to the prescriptive rule, the subject pronouns should always be used when the pronoun is a predicate nominal following be.

- Who is there? It is I. However, native speakers may use object pronouns

instead.

- Who is there? It is me.

The same thing when it comes to comparison. Although subject pronouns are considered the prescriptively correct pronoun forms for shortened comparison, native speakers often use an object pronoun.

- She is taller than I. - She is taller than me.

- She is taller than myself.

Conjoining two personal pronouns, or a noun and a pronoun, often causes confusion concerning which pronoun form should be used. Let’s consider the following examples:

- just between you and I, Zakaria is going to be promoted.*- just between you and me, Zakaria is going to be

promoted.

Similarly when the two pronouns, or a pronoun and a nouns, are conjoined in subject position.

- Him and I working on the project.* - Me and Julie are working on the project.*

Exercise: - In each sentence that follows, indicate whether the italicized pronoun is “appropriate” according to the prescriptivist rule. For each pronoun that isn’t, indicate what the appropriate pronoun would be and why: Example: - John and me were standing there, waiting for the bus to come.Answer: not appropriate because the conjoined noun and pronoun are in subject position, so we should use a subject pronoun. Hence, John and I were standing there.

1- Alice went with Fred, and John came along with Jean and I a little bit later.2- Me and this guy managed to get out of the car before it blew up. 3- Actually, the final design was submitted by John and myself.4- Me and Susan are living on the west side of San Francisco.5- Between you and me, I don’t think she is going to come.

• Reflexive pronouns are as follows:

myself ourselves yourself yourselves himself/herself/itself themselves

Reflexive pronouns:

Reflexive pronouns have emphatic and non-emphatic functions:

in their non-emphatic function, reflexive pronouns can:

Occur after reflexive verbs: Some verbs can only take a reflexive pronoun as an object. They are called reflexive verbs; they include: pride oneself, behave onself, adjust oneself, wash oneself, etc.

- He prides himself of his knowledge of basketball.

NB: In the reflexive verbs, the verbs are optionally reflexive.- He shaved himself with a rusty razor. - He shaved with a rusty razor.

Refer to a preceding NP: Typically, this NP, the antecedent, is the subject.

- Sphia talks a lot about herself. - Elmadani recognized himself in the picture.

• Whereas in their emphatic function, reflexive pronouns are used with a (pro)noun to emphasize it. The reflexive pronoun can occur in different positions:

- I, myself, would never do anything like that. - Myself, I would never do anything like that. - I would never do anything like that myself.

• The reciprocal pronouns, each other and one another, are used to indicate that an action is being performed by two or more individuals, each on the others. - Ali and Aicha admire each other. - We must learn to get along with one another.

Reciprocal pronouns:

Possessive pronouns:• The possessive pronouns are as follows:

mine ours yours yours his/hers/its theirs

• Possessive pronouns can replace the NPs that indicate possession: - is that her purse? Yes, it is hers Possessive pronouns can be used in determiner+ noun+ of+ possessive pronoun constructions when the speaker cannot or does not want to specify more. - A teacher of yours mentioned that you weren’t in school today.

Indefinite pronouns:

• They are formed by combining some, any, every, and no with the endings -one, -body, -thing, as shown in the following table:

• Indefinite pronouns take a singular form of the verb. - I hope everyone arrives on time. However, it is common to native speakers to refer back to indefinite pronouns with both singular or plural pronouns and possessive determiners. - Someone left her scarf in the class. - Someone left their scarf in the class. or -Everyone has his own preferences. - Everyone has their own preferences.

Demonstrative pronouns:Singular Plural

This That

TheseThose

• Demonstrative pronouns have an anaphoric function. They can have as their antecedent as a noun phrase or, in what is known as sentence anaphora, can have the entire clause or a series of clauses. - Here are application forms. You need to fill these out. - Zakaria’s wife has thrown away all his books and laptop. This infuriated him, but he could do nothing about it.

Problems that ESL/EFL students have with pronouns:

• current research indicates that the problems which EFL/ESL students have with learning English pronouns result from the similarities and differences between the pronoun system of the pronoun system of the learner’s native language and that of English. Most errors students make are:

• 1- Selecting the wrong personal pronoun:

In Farsi, for example, subject pronouns are optional since the verb inflections indicate number and person. For instance, they use the word ( (meaning left) to express he/she/it. So, native speakers of Farsi may select a pronoun of the wrong gender. For example: I saw him yesterday, in referring to a woman.

• 2- Transfer of reflexive pronouns: Students with L1s that contain more reflexive verbs in English commonly insert reflexive pronoun after English verbs that don‘t need them. This occurs when the English verb has a meaning similar to an L1 verb that takes a reflexive pronoun. - A soixante-cinq ans, ils doivent se retirer.- At Sixty years, they must themselves retire.

• 3- Modifying antecedents of reflexive pronouns: As we saw earlier, in a sentence that has a that clause, there is only one possible antecedent for the reflexive pronoun. Example: - Tom thinks that Mike likes himself. (The antecedent of that is Mike.)However, in Korean translation of the sentence above, both Mike and Tom are possible antecedents of the reflexive pronoun casin.- Tom-uh Mike-ka casin-ul coashanta-ko sayngkak-hanta.(Tom Mike himself likes thinks.) The word order!

• 4- Omission of subject pronouns:Languages such as Spanish and Italian permit sentences without subject pronouns. For example, in Spanish:

• Son mis amigos. ( are my friends)this sentence lacks the personal pronouns, but for Spanish the third person plural verb form son is enough to indicate that the subject must be they.

Suggestions for teaching pronouns:

Some English language textbooks design reading skill activities to help students overcome anaphora as a potential problem. Thus, they have developed exercises to provide students with practice in locating correct antecedents. However, Boudeguer-Yerkovic’s research indicates that exercises in ESL reading textbooks that ask students to identify antecedents of pronouns in paragraphs and short texts are just a waste of time.Generally, I think the teacher needs to take into account the problems stated before, like the interference of L1, and tries to diversify the activities like those proposed in the book.

ACTIVITY