Welcome to week three of Gruesome
Grammar Tuesday!
In this week’s Gruesday
post I am going to be discussing the pronoun. In fact I am
going to split this post up, because—believe or not—the pronoun is
more complicated and pesky than even those nosy nouns. So this week I am just
going to talk about the basic definitions of the pronoun and
describe how it is used in most instances.
What is a pronoun?
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Pronouns are used in place
of nouns (or sometimes another pronoun) to avoid repetition and make sentences
easier to understand.
o
Ex.—The mother
told the mother’s daughter that the mother was going to make spaghetti for
the mother’s daughter for dinner. –There
are no pronouns in the sentence and it makes the sentence
very hard to follow.
Here is the same sentence using pronouns.—The mother told her daughter that she was going to make spaghetti for her for dinner.
-
A pronoun may also stand in
the place of an understood noun.
o
Ex. If a person has been named before-hand, then
the sentence—Mary where did you put the
fishing pole?—Can just be cut down to—Where
did you put the fishing pole?
-
A pronoun can also stand in
as an indefinite it.
o
Ex. It is
way too cold.—it is the indefinite and is understood to mean the temperature
(of something).
According to The Chicago Manual of Style 16th edition,
there are six classes of pronouns.
1. personal
2. demonstrative
3. interrogative
4. relative
5. indefinite
6. adjective
Next week will be all about personal pronouns. Don't forget to come back and see how pesky pronouns can get!
This post would not have been possible without:
The Chicago Manual of Style 16th edition
and
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