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Pronoun poison

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Pronoun poison

by ayushiiitm » Mon Apr 12, 2010 4:13 am
I am just not able to decipher the pronoun ambiguity many a times.

Kindly help me on explanation for these questions

Source: Manhattan SC 2003 edition


1. The player's helmets need to be repainted so that they will be ready to be used at practice on Sunday

Now player's helmet is a possessive noun
so why usage of 'they' is correct, since it is subjective

Kindly point out where my concept is lacking

2. We finally returned all the books to the library, which we left at the front desk

why using 'we' is wrong

Better construction for this question is given as

We finally returned all the books, leaving them at the library's front desk
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by grockit_andrea » Mon Apr 12, 2010 6:04 am
In sentence 1, the reference is to the "player's helmets," and since "helmets" is plural, the pronoun must be plural as well; that's why you use "they." In sentence 2, the phrase beginning with "which..." is a modifier, and a modifier is presumed to modify the thing it's next to; in this case, that's "library," and it doesn't make sense to leave the library at the front desk. You want that modifier to be describing "books," and the revised version of the sentence does that. So in version 1 of sentence 2, it's not that "we" is incorrect, it's that the entire modifier is misplaced, and in rearranging the sentence to correct that error, one must change the pronoun to correctly refer to "books."
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