GRAMMAR SMART 5

Pronouns

Male: OK, you got your verbs, you got your nouns, and you got your pronouns. Then there are your 1)modifiers like your adjectives, adverbs and prepositions.

Female: This half-hour, we’ll discuss pronouns and the many interesting ways people have of messing with them. With pronouns, there are two basic issues that

have to be addressed. Number one concerns which pronouns are appropriate to use in place of the nouns they replace. As it was with verbs, this is an issue of agreement.

Male: The other aspect of pronouns that we’ll examine is the 2)deceptive 1 way many of them have of sounding plural 2 when they’re really singular and occasionally 3)vice 3 versa.

Female: So let’s start by looking at the first issue: agreement with the 4)antecedent.

Male: Umm...what’s the antecedent?

Female: Good question. It means the word that came before. In this case, it’s the word for which the pronoun substitutes. For example, in the sentence, ＂Tony wants a cigar and he is going to go out and find one＂, the pronoun is ＂he＂ and its antecedent, the word it represents, is ＂Tony＂.

Male: There are three basic rules to remember when working with antecedents. Rule number one: the pronoun must agree with the antecedent’s 5)gender 4.

Female: Women get ＂she＂ or ＂her＂ while men are usually referred to as ＂he＂ or ＂him＂.

Male: Rule number two: the pronoun must agree with the antecedent’s person.

Female: That is to say, in the first person, use ＂I＂, ＂me＂ or ＂we＂. In the second person, use ＂you＂. And in the third person, use ＂he＂, ＂she＂, ＂they＂ etc.

Male: Rule number three: the pronoun must agree with its antecedent’s number.

Female: Right. If you’re dealing 5 with more than one person or thing, use a plural pronoun such as they. Singular gets something like it, he or she.

Male: Here’s an example: Although the average rock musician owns many pieces of sophisticated, expensive equipment, they still don’t play with the 6)virtuosity 6 of most classical players.

Female: The problem is hard to hear because the pronoun is so far away from its antecedent. Ask yourself, ＂Who doesn’t play with the virtuosity of most classical players?＂

Male: The average rock musician. Ah ha, I see. That’s a singular noun.

Female: Right, but in your sentence you’ve put a lot of plural nouns that aren’t the antecedent before the pronoun. So by the time you got there, you forgot to use the singular pronoun ＂she＂.

Male: She?

Female: Joan Jet, Chrissy Heine, Madonna, Pat Benetar.

Male: Pat Benetar? Is there no depth to which you will not sink?

Female: Careful now. Pat Benetar was the hardest rocking woman in show business for quite a while.

Male: You are a desperate woman. Anyway the pronoun, whether male or female, must remain singular because the antecedent ＂the average rock musician＂ is singular.

Female: Furthermore, because the antecedent is in the third person, that is, it’s neither an ＂I＂ or a ＂you＂ but a ＂he＂ or a ＂she＂ that we’re talking about, it would be wrong to use either the first or second person pronoun in this sentence.

Male: And just as we solved the problem in the verb section, we can fix this error by simply removing all the information that sits between the words that must agree, and jam them right up against one another.

Female: When there’s no distance between them, there’s no difficulty in hearing whether they agree. Listen. ＂Although the average rock musician owns...they still don’t play.＂

Male: Now you can clearly tell that, ＂that’s no good. They clearly needs to be a ‘he’ or ‘she’.＂

Female: Some more examples of some common mistakes: ＂Steve and Robert went to the store and he bought some 7)ginseng.＂ The problem? As we learned in the section on verbs, the conjunction ＂and＂ makes two singular subjects plural. The plural pronoun in the third person is ＂they＂.

Male: But what if only one of them bought the ginseng? Are you saying that we’re stuck using a plural pronoun anyway?

Female: Not at all. But if you want to make it clear that only one of them actually bought the ginseng, then you have to say just that one of them did. And furthermore, if you need to 8)clarify which one, then you simply have to say which one: Steve or Robert.

Male: Once again, these three rules are the basic ones. The pronouns must agree with the words they replace in terms of number, gender and person.

Female: There are some other twists to pronouns, however, and these are where most people start making more mistakes. We know that the subject of a verb is a thing that’s doing the action that the verb expresses.

Male: The object of a verb, however, is the thing which is having the action done to it. For example, in the sentence, ＂Christie walked the runway,＂ ‘Christie’ is the subject. She’s doing the walking. While the runway is the object of that action. The runway is receiving the walking. And what a walk it is!

Female: She is 9)fierce.

Male: Under rated if you can believe that. This is important because pronouns 10)differ according to whether they are representing the subject or the object of a sentence.

Female: Right. The pronoun that represents Christie, the subject is she. She walks the runway. If however, she became the object, then we’d have to use the object pronoun ＂her＂.CE

21、巧学语法 （五）

代词

男∶好的，你学习了动词、名词、代词，还有诸如形容词、副词和介词之类的修饰词。

女∶这半小时我们将讨论代词以及人们将其混淆的一些有趣的事。说到代词，这里要提到两条基本的原则。第一条和哪些代词适合替代它要代替的名词有关，这和动词的统一原则是一样的。

男∶关于代词我们将讨论的另一个方面就是许多代词具有欺骗性，它们听起来是复数但事实上它们是单数的，偶尔是相反的情形。

女∶因此让我们先来看看第一条原则：与先行词保持一致。

男∶嗯……什么是先行词？

女∶问得好！意指先前出现过的词，这里是指代词要替代的词。例如∶在“Tony wants a cigar and he is going to go out and find one”一句中，代词是“he”，它的先行词也就是被它替代的词是“Tony”。

男∶在与先行词打交道时要记住三条基本原则。第一条：代词一定要与先行词的性别统一。

女∶女人用“she”或者“her”，而男人通常用“he”或“him”。

男∶第二条原则：代词必须要与先行词的人称统一。

女∶也就是说，第一人称用“I”、“me”或“we”，第二人称用“you”，第三人称则用“he”、“she”、“they”等等。

男∶第三条：代词必须与先行词的数保持一致。

女∶是的。如果你要替代一个以上的人或物，就得用一个复数代词，例如“they”，单数则要用一些类似于“it ”、“he”或“she”的词。

男∶这里有一个例子：“Although the average rock musician owns many pieces of sophisticated, expensive equipment, they still don誸 play with the virtuosity of most classical players.”

女∶很难听出有什么问题，因为代词离它的先行词太远了。问问你自己∶“Who doesn誸 play with the virtuosity of most classical players?”

男∶“The average rock musician.” 啊哈，我明白了，那是个单数名词。

女∶正确，但是在你说的那句话中，你用了很多复数名词，这些词都不是代词的先行词。因此等到你要替代它的时候，你便忘了使用单数代词“she”。

男∶She？

女∶琼·杰特，克里斯·海因，麦当娜，帕特·贝内特。

男∶帕特·贝内特？难道你举的例子就没有个范围吗？

女∶注意了，帕特·贝内特成为演艺界最红的摇滚女星已很久了。

男∶你真是一个走极端的女人。不管代词是阴性还是阳性都必须是单数的，因为先行词“the average rock musician”是单数的。

女∶另外，因为先行词是第三人称单数，也就是说我们谈论的既不是“I右膊皇恰皔ou”，而是“he”或者“she”，在这句话中用第一人称或第二人称都是不正确的。

男∶就像我们在动词那一章解决问题的方法一样，只要把需要保持一致的两个单词之间的内容略去，把两个词合到一起，我们就能避免这类错误。

女∶一旦两词之间没有距离，就不难听出它们是否一致了。听：“Although the average rock musician owns...they still don誸 play.”

男∶现在你能明白地说∶“那是不对的，显然这个代词应该是‘he’或者‘she’。”

女∶再举几个常见的错误例子：“Steve and Robert went to the store and he bought some ginseng.”问题在哪儿？正如我们在动词一章学到的，连词“and”把两个单数主语变成一个复数主语，而第三人称代词的复数形式是“they”。

男∶但是如果他们当中只有一个人买了人参呢？你是不是在说不管怎样都要用一个复数代词呢？

女∶不是的，如果你想表明他们中实际上只有一个人买了人参，你就得说：“one of them”。如果你要进一步说明是谁，则你只需要讲出哪一个，“Steve”还是“Robert”就可以了。

男∶再强调一遍，这三条原则都是基本原则，代词在数、性和人称上都必须与它要替代的词保持一致。

女∶不过人们对代词的认识还存在其它一些偏见，这也是大多数人更容易犯错误的地方。大家知道，动词的主语是指发出动词所表示的那个动作的事物。

男∶动词的宾语则是承受这个动作的事物。譬如在“Christie walked the runway.”一句中，“Christie”是主语，是她在进行“walk”这个动作，而“runway”是这个动作的宾语，是“runway”承受着“walking”这个动作，这是怎样一种“walk”呀！

女∶她好厉害呀！

男∶如果你相信那就不仅仅只是用这个词来形容了。这一点很重要，因为依据代词是替代句中的主语还是宾语的不同，所用的词也不同。

女∶是的，当代词指代“Chris-tie”作主语时，它是“she”，“She walks the runway”。如果她作宾语，则我们只得用代词的宾格“her”。CE

1) modifier [5mCdifaiE] n. 修饰语，修饰成分

2) deceptive [di5septiv] a. 欺骗性的

3) vice versa 反之亦然，反过来也是这样

4) antecedent [9Enti5si:dEnt] n. 先行词，先辈

5) gender [5dVendE] n. 性

6) virtuosity [9vE:tju5Csiti] n. 艺术鉴别力

7) ginseng [5dVinseN] n. 人参

8) clarify [5klArirai] v. 澄清，阐明

9) fierce [fiEs] a. 残忍的，凶猛的

10) differ [5difE] v. 不一致，不同