Tuesday 10 January 2012

Lets go deeper into "Pronoun"

Possessive pronouns show who owns something described in a sentence. They include mine, his, hers, its, ours, yours, their, and theirs. Possessive adjectives are similar to possessive pronouns. However, the possessive adjective comes before the object of the sentence; the possessive pronoun is the object of the sentence. See the difference here:

That is my dog. (possessive adjective, before the object “dog”)
The dog is mine. (possessive pronoun, which is the object)

Intensive pronouns and reflexive pronouns look the same. However, they act differently in a sentence. Intensive pronouns put an emphasis on other pronouns or nouns. Reflexive pronouns rename the subject in a sentence. Look at the following examples:

Intensive pronoun – She herself will go to the bank. (herself emphasizes the pronoun she)
Reflexive pronoun – She cut herself on the arm. (herself renames the pronoun she)

Intensive and reflexive pronouns include:
myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, and themselves.
Demonstrative pronouns refer to things in relation to distance.
This and these refer to things that are close by. That and those refer to things farther away.

This is your shirt.
That is my house on the corner.
These good friends are sitting next to me.
Those roads in the next town are bumpy.

Indefinite pronouns replace nouns that are not specified. They include the following: all, another, any, anybody, anyone, anything, both, each, either, everybody, everyone, everything, few, many, neither, nobody, none, no one, nothing, one, several, some, somebody, someone, and something. Read the example sentences for a better understanding.

We gave everything to the homeless shelter
All were sad to see the children go.
Give a present to each as they come in.

Interrogative pronouns are used to ask a question. They include who, whom, what, which, whose, whoever, whomever, whatever, and whichever. Consider the example sentences below:

Which of these do you like best?
Who was just in this room?
Whatever happens next, I am prepared.

Relative pronouns connect (relate) noun or pronoun clauses with other parts of a sentence. They include who, whom, what, which, whose, whoever, whomever, whatever, whichever, and that. See how these are used in the sentences below.

The paper that she just wrote is due tomorrow.
Learning is easier for people who have a good teacher.
Whoever leaves the room needs to turn off the light.

Pronouns do a lot in the English language, don't they? They are the no-name workhorses, jumping in for thesuperstar nouns when they get exhausted. Hey, someone's got to do something about the work nobody wants to do!

Now that you have understand, we'll have a little exercise to see whether you have fun learning it in the next post :)

No comments:

Post a Comment