Your English Class

Pronouns: Antecedents and Classes

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by Tom Fasano

A Pronoun is a word used in place of a noun. It is most commonly used as a substitute word to prevent the awkward repetition of a noun.

Take, for instance, “Michael asked his mother to send him his favorite sweatshirt, which he left behind in his closet.” Without pronouns, we would have to say, “Michael asked Michael’s mother to send Michael Michael’s favorite sweatshirt, the sweatshirt Michael left behind in Michael’s closet.” The advantage of using pronouns is obvious.

Antecedent of a Pronoun. The noun for which the pronoun stands is called the Antecedent of the pronoun.

Thus in the above example, Michael is the antecedent of his, him, his, he, and his; and sweatshirt is the antecedent of which.

Note. “Antecedent” comes from the Latin and means “going before.”

The antecedent may also be compound: that is, it may consist of two or more nouns.

Bring the rake and the shovel if they are in the shed.

The pronoun can also act as the antecedent of another pronoun.

He who is lazy will never succeed (he is the antecedent of who).

Everyone on the team always does his best (everyone is the antecedent of his).

Classes of Pronouns. Pronouns are divided into the following classes.

Personal Pronouns: “He wanted to spend time with them.” “She sent him a text.”

Relative Pronouns: “George saw the man who was standing there.” “I like the pasta sauce that my wife makes.”

Interrogative Pronouns: “What do you want?” “Who said that?”

Demonstrative Pronouns: “That is my favorite book.” “These are the best knives a chef can have.”

Indefinite Pronouns: “Anything would be better than nothing.” “Somebody is responsible for this.”

Our next podcasts will explore the different classes of pronouns and their various properties and uses: namely, Person, Number, Gender, and Case.

Copyright © 2012 Thomas Fasano.
Your English Class™ trademark is the property of Thomas Fasano.

The Principal Uses of Nouns (Part Two)

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Object of a Preposition. A noun may be used as an Object of the Preposition.

The barista served the coffee to the customer.

King Lear and his fool walked across the heath.

The plane arrived from New York.

Here customer, heath, and New York are the objects of the prepositions to, across, and from, respectively. (Prepositions are words like to, from, under, through, during, between, above, by, over, before, after, etc.)

The object of the preposition answers the questions what? or whom? after the preposition: thus, “He swam across the lake.” Across what? — Answer, the lake.

In Apposition. The noun may be used in Apposition with another noun.

My brother, the taxi driver, has his own blog.

I heard my neighbor’s dog, Carson, barking.

We visited Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy.

A noun in apposition stands for the same person or thing as the other noun: in other words, it is another name for the same person or thing. In a combination of two nouns with this sort of relation, the one that follows the first is said to be in apposition with the first, not the first with the second.

Note. A predicate noun and a noun in apposition with the subject of the sentence both stand for the same person or thing as the subject. What distinguishes them is that the predicate noun is connected to the subject by a verb.

My neighbor is a professor (predicate noun).

My neighbor, the professor, arrived at the party (apposition)

A noun in apposition may be separated from its related noun by several words, if the relation between the two nouns is clear.

A lone man walked across the desert, a solitary figure in the scorching landscape.

Objective Complement. A noun may be used as an Objective Complement.

We elected Barack Obama president.

They made my uncle supervisor.

The objective complement is so called because it is added to the direct object in order to complete the meaning expressed by the verb (“complement” is something that completes). Thus, in the second example, they didn’t make my uncle; they made my uncle supervisor. A simple test is to insert to be between the direct object and the noun following: for example, “They made my uncle to be supervisor.” If to be can be inserted in this position without changing the meaning of the sentence, then the second noun is an objective complement.

The objective complement is commonly used with verbs expressing the idea of choosing, making, electing, appointing and similar ideas, but there are exceptions.

Concertgoers considered Mozart a prodigy.

The police found the man a raving lunatic.

Nominative Absolute. A noun may be used Absolutely with a Participle to form what’s known as a Nominative Absolute construction.

The curtain rising, the audience anticipated the start of the play.

The book being short, I read it in two hours.

Her eyes rolling upwards, the girl made no effort to hide her disgust.

For now it is sufficient to say that a participle is a verb form ending in -ing, such as being and rising — although in a future podcast we will have to modify this definition. The nominative absolute construction consists of a noun followed by a participle.

When such a construction is placed at the beginning of the sentence, it must be carefully distinguished from the noun used as the subject of the verb.

For example, in the sentence, “The soldiers needing backup, the helicopters soon arrived,” soldiers is in the nominative absolute construction with the participle needing, and helicopters is the subject of the verb arrived. On the other hand, in “The soldiers, needing backup, radioed command for helicopters,” soldiers is not in a nominative absolute construction: it is the subject of the sentence (subject of the verb radioed).

Note. The word absolute, as used here, means “free” or “loose.” The noun in a nominative absolute construction is “free” from the traditional uses of a noun in a sentence, such as the subject or object of a verb.

Direct address. A noun may be used in Direct Address.

David, it would be better to explain that in an e-mail.

My illness, dear friend, is worse than imagined.

Sandy, come here.

Students, listen up.

Here David, friend, Sandy, and students are the names or words by which the persons are addressed. These nouns do not function as the subject of the verbs. The subject of the first sentence is it; in the second, illness; in the third and fourth the subject is you understood (the subject is usually omitted in a direct command because it is always you). With the third example, compare “Sandy comes here every day” — in which Sandy is the subject.

Take note that a word used in direct address is set off from the rest of the sentence by a comma or commas.

Any word having one of these nine uses in a sentence (covered in this and the previous podcast) is a noun or noun-equivalent in that sentence, despite the fact that it may be used as another part of speech in other sentences.

Run is a verb.

He mispronounced superfluous.

The poor pay more.

Nouns Used as Other Parts of Speech. Some words that are usually nouns may be used:

(1) As Adverbs (adverb-equivalents), to denote time, place, measure, etc.

We’re going on vacation tomorrow.

I went home.

She ran ten kilometers.

In etymology these words are nouns since they are the names of things; but in the above sentences they are used as adverbs (in a future podcast we will discover that any word that tells when, where, how, how much, or how far is an adverb.

(2) As Adjectives (adjective-equivalents).

This is my brother’s camera.

The football game was Sunday night.

Copyright © 2012 Thomas Fasano.
Your English Class™ trademark is the property of Thomas Fasano.

The Principal Uses of Nouns (Part One)

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by Tom Fasano

The principal uses of a noun in a sentence are:

Subject of a Verb. A noun may be used as a subject of a verb.

The birds flew away.

The man jumped off the bridge.

Here comes the train.

The subject names the person or thing about whom or which something is said by the verb. In some sentences the subject follows the verb, as in the last example above.

Predicate Noun. A noun may be used as a predicate noun.

The president became a dictator.

The mayor is Bill Henry.

My grandfather was a clockmaker.

The gangster turned snitch.

Normally a predicate noun follows the verb and answers the question who? or what? and it stands for the same person or object as the subject. For example, “The president became what?” — Answer, a dictator. “The mayor is who?” — Answer, Bill Henry. The dictator is the same person as the president (subject); Bill Henry is the same person as the mayor (subject).

Direct Object of a Verb. A noun may be used as the direct object of a verb.

The carpenter built a house.

The soldier killed the enemy.

The direct object names the receiver of the action indicated by the verb; it answers the question what? or whom? and it stands for a person or thing different from the subject. For example, “The carpenter built what?” — Answer, a house. “The soldier killed whom?” Answer, the enemy. The house is not the same person or thing as carpenter (subject); the enemy is not the same person as soldier (subject).

Both the predicate noun and the direct object of a verb answer the same question, what? or who? (whom?). They are easily distinguished, however, by their relation to the subject: the predicate noun stands for the same person or thing as the subject; the direct object stands for a different person or thing. The only exception occurs in use of a reflexive pronoun to be covered in a future lesson.

The direct object occasionally precedes the subject of the verb.

These shoes she bought in Paris.

Indirect Object of a Verb. A Noun may be used as the Indirect Object of a Verb

The man gave his wife a gift.

Mary bought her grandmother a Christmas card.

The indirect object tells to whom or to what, for whom or to whom something is done. In the first sentence above, the direct object gift tells what the man gave, and the indirect object wife tells to whom he gave it; in the second sentence, the direct object Christmas card tells what Mary bought, and the indirect object grandmother tells for whom she bought it.

A phrase beginning with the preposition to or for can be used in place of an indirect object. In such instances the first sentence would become “The man gave a gift to his wife”; the second sentence would become “Mary bought a Christmas card for her grandmother.” With an indirect object, the to or for is never expressed in the sentence; were it expressed, the noun would be an object of a preposition (to be covered in the next podcast) and not an indirect object.

Also in the classification of indirect objects are certain nouns that are equivalent to of whom when used after the verb ask. Thus the sentence, “The teacher asked the student a question,” is equivalent to “The teacher asked a question of the student.” In this instance the idea of to is also present, because asking something of a person is the syntactic equivalent of addressing one’s self to him.

Copyright © 2012 Thomas Fasano.
Your English Class™ trademark is the property of Thomas Fasano.