This week’s article focuses on additional uses of the pronoun for communicative contexts. We shall be considering the following types of pronouns: reflexive and intensive pronouns, interrogative pronouns, and indefinite pronouns.
To begin, reflexive and intensive pronouns are simply personal pronouns combined with -self and -selves to form different pronouns: myself, ourselves, yourself, yourselves, himself, herself, themselves, and itself. Now you may wonder how to tell which is reflexive and which is intensive since both pronouns are the same type of pronouns. What do they mean when used as intensive or as reflexive? The answer to that is where the clarification lies. For one thing, these forms of pronouns are said to be reflexive when they indicate an action that has been done to the antecedent. In other words, they rename and reflect to the antecedent. I hope you remember what is meant by ‘antecedent’ – the last article on pronouns highlighted it. Let’s consider examples of the pronouns as reflexive:
1.Temi got herself an admission at one of the most prestigious universities in Nigeria.
2.I bought myself lunch today.
3.Ikechukwu told himself the truth and promptly did what he had to do.
In example 1, do you notice how ‘herself’ reflects to the antecedent ‘Temi’? ‘Herself’ thus renames ‘Temi’ so that rather than have ‘Temi got Temi …’ we have ‘Temi got herself …’ The same principle applies to the use of the reflexive ‘myself’ in place of ‘I’ in example 2, and ‘himself’ in place of ‘Ikechukwu’ in example 3.
Now that we have clarified how to use the reflexive pronoun, let’s turn attention to the use of the intensive. The pronouns are said to be intensive when they emphasize or intensify their antecedents. They show that the antecedents, not any other person or thing, is responsible for the said action of the sentence. Consider the following examples:
1.Janet herself opened the hair salon business.
2.‘I myself will do it,’ Jehovah of armies said.
3.The people themselves will have to file an appeal.
Alright, notice that in example 1 the reflexive pronoun ‘herself’ is used to emphasize that Janet, not anyone else, opened the salon business. She did it of her own accord; she didn’t depend on anyone for assistance. Also, in example 2 we see a direct quotation of Jehovah of armies saying he will do something. Using the intensive pronoun, He emphasizes that he isn’t going to depend on anyone to get the thing done, but he himself will get it done. So, learn the right usage of both reflexive and intensive pronouns, and use them accordingly.
The next pronouns to be considered are indefinite pronouns. When a pronoun does not refer to a specific thing or person, it is called an indefinite pronoun. The following are examples of indefinite pronouns: all; both; everything; nobody; some; another; each; few; no one; somebody; any; anyone; anything; either; everybody; everyone; many; most; neither; nothing; one; several; someone; something; such, etc.
One important thing to note about indefinite pronouns is that they are mostly singular in nature. What this means is that they are to be used with singular verbs. Consider the following examples:
1.Everyone is ready.
2.No one has come.
3.Someone is here to see you.
4.Anything you decide to do is fine.
5.None is an option for me.
6.Everything is now okay between us.
From the examples, do you notice that each of those indefinite pronouns takes a singular verb? That’s how to use them.
Another kind of pronoun to consider is ‘Who’ versus ‘Whom’. They are known as subject and object pronouns. It is oftentimes a big deal for some people to tell when to use ‘who’ and when to use ‘whom’. The difference is quite easy to know. For one thing, ‘who’ is for the subject of a sentence while ‘whom’ is for the object of a verb or a preposition. Look at the following examples:
1.Who ate my food?
2.To whom was the letter delivered?
3.She gave of herself willingly.
4.The car was delivered in good condition to him.
In example 1, ‘who’ is a subject pronoun. It is in the subjective case, same as other pronouns that must be in the subject position, such as ‘I’, ‘she’, ‘he’, ‘they’, and ‘we’. This means that you do not put these pronouns in positions other than the subject; for example, you shouldn’t say, ‘I told she’. You should rather say, ‘I told her’. That’s because ‘her’ stays in the object position and not ‘she’ which is a subject pronoun. That also means that you should say, ‘She told me’ – ‘she’ being in the subject position, and not ‘Her told me’ because ‘her does not belong to the subject arena. Other objective case pronouns are ‘him’, ‘them’, ‘me’, and ‘us’. In example 2, ‘to whom’ enables us respond to the question of the receiver of the action. We could thus say, ‘The letter was delivered to Mary (or to her)’. This shows that ‘whom’ is an object pronoun. Additionally, in example 3, the subject pronoun ‘she’ can be substituted by ‘who’ and not ‘whom’ because the former is a subject pronoun, as has been emphasized. We can, therefore, rephrase that statement as a question: ‘Who gave of herself willingly?’ The answer would be a subjective case pronoun as well – ‘She’. The same principle applies to example 4, where we can change ‘to him’ to ‘to whom’ if we asked a question. And the answer we get will be an object pronoun too. I hope these examples help to clarify the points.
The last set of pronouns I will treat here are those known as reciprocal pronouns. There are only two of them in the English language: ‘each other’ and ‘one another’. These pronouns are used to describe a strong connection between two or more persons or things. Many scholars would argue that ‘each other’ is strictly for describing a mutual relationship between two persons, for example, ‘The man and his wife love each other’, while ‘one another’ is considered best for describing the relationship among three or more persons, for example, ‘The children of that man love one another’.
• We will return to report writing next week.