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Indefinite Pronouns

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by moatazyousif » Sat Mar 20, 2010 12:23 am
I read these 2 sentence (or at least very similar) as correct sentences in KAPLAN,

1- If anyone wants to leave early, THEY can.
2- somebody has spilled THEIR coffee on the carpet

but I doubt that they are coreect, I would appreciate your feedback.
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by rockeyb » Sat Mar 20, 2010 2:18 am
moatazyousif wrote:I read these 2 sentence (or at least very similar) as correct sentences in KAPLAN,

1- If anyone wants to leave early, THEY can.
2- somebody has spilled THEIR coffee on the carpet

but I doubt that they are coreect, I would appreciate your feedback.

I dont think they are correct as ANYONE and SOMEBODY are singular and will take singular pronouns .

Having said that we need to know the context in which these pronouns have been used , some times we may have exceptions .
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by fibbonnaci » Sat Mar 20, 2010 2:35 am
an indefinite pronoun has a plural pronoun to refer back to the indefinite pronoun but a singular verb.
'their, they' etc are correct pronouns to refer back to 'somebody, anybody' etc.
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by rockeyb » Sat Mar 20, 2010 3:29 am
@fibbonnaci ,

Hey , I think its not always true .

Ex : Each of the members has his/her vote .

EACH - singular indefinite pronoun.

his/her -singular personal pronoun .

Lets look at another example

Ex: All the people in the stadium clapped their hands .

ALL - One of the SANAM pronouns and since it refers to people here its plural .

THEIR - plural personal pronoun .

But its confusing :

Ex : Is everyone happy with his/her gift?

Ex : Are all the people happy with their gifts?

So I believe Singular indefinite pronoun takes Singular personal pronoun and plural Indefinite pronoun takes plural personal pronoun.

Please correct me if I am wrong .
Thanks .
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by moatazyousif » Sat Mar 20, 2010 7:11 am
fibbonnaci wrote:an indefinite pronoun has a plural pronoun to refer back to the indefinite pronoun but a singular verb.
'their, they' etc are correct pronouns to refer back to 'somebody, anybody' etc.
would you please fibbonnaci, share with us your reference to this information because I want to read more about this tipic, it's really confusing as what rockeyb said.
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by fibbonnaci » Sat Mar 20, 2010 12:14 pm
i have prepared my grammar notes from various sources- my high school grammar book, Wren and Martin, Spidey's notes, Sahil's notes. So i do not really remember from where i picked up this grammar rule, but i will tell u exactly what i have written, so that you may include it in your compilation.
Indefinite pronouns:
eg: One hardly knows what to do
somebody has stolen my watch
Did you ask anybody to come?

All these pronouns refer to people/ things in a general way, but do not refer to any person/ thing in particular. So they are called indefinite pronouns.
We use a singular verb after indefinite pronouns.
After words with everybody, somebody, anybody, someone etc we use plural words even though the verb is singular. We ca use he, she, him/her etc with someone/someone when we know the person's gender.
eg: I shall be glad to help everyone of my boys in his/their studies.
"their" is usually accepted correct for indefinite pronouns.

Hope this helps!
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by moatazyousif » Sat Mar 20, 2010 3:26 pm
Thanks a lot fibbonnaci for your clarifications, I really appreciate it.

But I got back to my notes that I took from Manhattan SC Guide and found the below example.

- Everyone here needs his/her own copy of the textbook in order to take this class.
either his or her is correct.

what do you think?
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by rockeyb » Sat Mar 20, 2010 8:11 pm
moatazyousif wrote:Thanks a lot fibbonnaci for your clarifications, I really appreciate it.

But I got back to my notes that I took from Manhattan SC Guide and found the below example.

- Everyone here needs his/her own copy of the textbook in order to take this class.
either his or her is correct.

what do you think?
As fibo said we dont know the gender for the noun the indefinite pronoun is referring to so we can not specify his / her .

Had the sentence been written :

Ex : Every one of the boys needs HIS own copy of the textbook in order to take this class.

HIS here would have been correct.

We can also say :

Ex : Every one here needs THEIR own copy of the textbook in order to take this class.

Correct again .

So the to summarize : If gender is known we can use singular / plural pronouns to refer to indefinite pronoun , but if gender is not known either singular or plural personal pronoun will correct.
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