Free Grammar Help
Nouns are defined as "person, place or thing." But we know they extend to include ideas and concepts as well as activities. And when we write, we might not want to keep writing the name of the noun over and over again. So we use a pronoun to replace the noun.Here's a table to try to make sense of the prounouns:
|
Subject |
Possessive |
Object |
| First Person Singular |
I |
my, mine |
me |
| Second Person Singular |
you |
your, yours |
you |
| Third Person Singular |
he, she, it |
his, her, hers, its |
him, her, it |
| First Person Plural |
we |
our, ours |
us |
| Second Person Plural |
you |
your, yours |
you |
| Third Person Plural |
they |
their, theirs |
them |
| Relative or Interrogative |
who |
whose |
whom |
I just want to point out that none of the pronouns uses an apostrophe. So even though we might write "The dog's bone," we do not subsequently refer to "it's bone." "It's" is a contraction meaning "It is"; "Its" is a possessive pronoun. A similar mistake is using "who's" for "whose". Sometimes people also throw an apostrophe into "hers" or "theirs" and write "her's" or "their's." Always wrong.
The second point is about the difference between "who" and "whom." Notice in the following sentence that "who" is the subject of the clause. "I went to see the man who stole my money." Even though the subject of the sentence is "I", the man is still the subject of the adjectival clause.
In the following sentences all subjects are in red, the verbs in green, and objects are in blue. Watch how I need to use who and whom. "He is the man with whom my daughter eloped. He is the man whom I am going to track down and murder. He is the man who caused me to lose my daughter." In the first two sentences the subject of the clause is "my daughter" or "I" and the object of that clause is "the man." In the third sentence "the man" is the subject of the adjectival clause "who caused me to lose my daughter." Notice that this clause has a verb as well. In fact, the difference between a clause and phrase is that a clause has a subject and verb in it; a phrase is simply any group of words working together.
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