Pronoun-antecedent disagreement

1. Pronoun-antecedent disagreement Carissa Moorehead

2. What are they? • A pronoun takes the place of a noun in a sentence, like a substitute • An antecedent is what the pronoun refers to • The pronoun and antecedent must agree! (gender & number)

3. Indefinite pronouns • Doesn’t refer to a specific person, place or thing. • “not definite” Words like: few, many, everyone, everything, anything, anyone, somebody, someone, none, etc. (this is what makes agreements a tad messy!)

4. Common pronouns • their, we, anyone, everyone, everybody, etc. • If we are referring to “Bob,” the pronoun would be “he.” • If we are referring to “Jane, Sam, and Evelyn,” the pronoun would be “they;” if you are Jane, Sam, or Evelyn, you would use “We.” • Jane, Sam, and Evelyn went to the store to get their supplies. • Here, the pronoun is “their” while the antecedent is Jane, Sam, and Evelyn

5. Pronoun-antecedent • The antecedent refers to the pronoun • Jane, Sam, and Evelyn went to the store to get their supplies. • “Their” is talking about ____? • Pay attention to gender and number! • The antecedent is red and the pronoun is black.

6. Always singular! anybody anyone anything each either everybody everyone everything neither many nobody no one nothing somebody someone something

7. A few examples… • The man took our car keys but he is not valet! • We wanted to visit the parks in the area, but they were closed. • Will anyone share his/her book with me? • My dad fixed the gate but forgot to paint it.

8. Singular vs. plural: be careful! Since “can” is singular, we must use “its” to describe it. Since “both” is plural, we use “their.” http://www.towson.edu/ows/pro_antagree.htm

9. A couple more… http://www.towson.edu/ows/pro_antagree.htm

10. Little story about indefinite pronouns!... • Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, Nobody • That's Not My Job! • This is a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody. • There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it. • It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done. http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/pronouns-notmyjob.htm

11. You try!! • Be sure to check gender and number (singular vs. plural) to make sure they agree!