Pronouns | English Olympiad for Class 8 PDF Download

Introduction

• A pronoun is a word that is used in place of a noun or a noun phrase.
• Pronouns help avoid repetition in a sentence and make it more concise.
• Pronouns agree in number (singular or plural) and gender (masculine, feminine, or neuter) with the nouns they replace.

Types of Pronouns

1. Personal Pronouns:

• Personal pronouns refer to specific people or things.
• They can be in the subjective case (when they function as the subject of a sentence) or the objective case (when they function as the object of a verb or preposition).

2. Possessive Pronouns:

• Possessive pronouns show ownership or possession.
• They include words like mine, yours, his, hers, ours, and theirs.

3. Reflexive Pronouns:

• Reflexive pronouns are used when the subject of a sentence and the object are the same person or thing.
• Examples: myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves.

4. Demonstrative Pronouns:

• Demonstrative pronouns are used to point out specific people or things.
• Examples: this, that, these, those.

5. Interrogative Pronouns:

• Interrogative pronouns are used to ask questions.
• Examples: who, whom, whose, which, what.

6. Relative Pronouns:

• Relative pronouns are used to introduce a relative clause that provides additional information about a noun or pronoun in the main clause.
• Examples: who, whom, whose, which, that.

7. Indefinite Pronouns:

• Indefinite pronouns refer to nonspecific people or things.
• Examples: everyone, someone, anybody, nobody, something, anything.

Agreement of Pronouns

• Pronouns must agree in number and gender with the nouns they replace.
• If the noun is singular, the pronoun should be singular. If the noun is plural, the pronoun should be plural.
• Examples: He is a doctor. They are doctors.

Antecedents of Pronouns

• The noun or pronoun that a pronoun refers to is called its antecedent.
• The antecedent must be clear and unambiguous to avoid confusion.

Common Errors with Pronouns

1. Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement:

• Ensure that the pronoun agrees in number and gender with its antecedent.
• Example of correct agreement: The boy did his homework.
• Example of incorrect agreement: The boy did their homework.

2. Ambiguous Pronoun Reference:

• Avoid using pronouns that could have multiple possible antecedents, leading to confusion.
• Example of ambiguous reference: The cat scratched the dog, which was painful. (It is unclear whether the cat or the dog was painful.)

Look at the following table. It will help you to use correct pronoun or possessive adjective:

The table above gives only the third person. The one below is more exhaustive: