Relative pronoun

“ The relative is not varied on account of gender, person, or number, like a personal pronoun. When we use a personal pronoun, in speaking of a man, we say he, and of a woman, she; in speaking of one person or thing, we use a singular pronoun, of more than one, a plural, and so on ”

“ We beg to inform thee, that the third person plural has no distinction of gender.
SECTION II.
OF THE RELATIVE PRONOUNS.
The Pronouns called Relative are such as relate, for the most part, to some word or phrase, called the antecedent, on account of its going before: they are, who, which, and that: as, “The man who does not drink enough when he can get it, is a fool; but he that drinks too much is a beast.” ”

“ In a language which provides for the distinctions of person by particles prefixed or suffixed to the verb, it will scarcely be expected, that separate and independent relative pronouns should exist, or if such are to be found, their use, as separate parts of speech, must, it will have been anticipated, be quite limited—limited to simple interrogatory forms of expression, and not applicable to the indicative, or declaratory. ”

“ They are used for emphasis: [He himself is an authority on the subject] .
2. They are also used reflexively: [The boy injured himself] .
+36. The Relative or Conjunctive Pronouns.+—The pronouns who, which, what (= that which) , that, and as (after such) are more than equivalents for nouns, inasmuch as they serve as connectives. They are often named relative pronouns because they relate to some antecedent either expressed or implied; they are equally well named conjunctive pronouns because they are used as connectives. ”

“ These words, relating to words in another clause, and binding the clauses together, are called +Relative Pronouns+. By adding ever and soever to who, which, and what, we form what are called the +Compound Relative Pronouns+ whoever, whosoever, whichever, whatever, etc., used in a general way, and without any word expressed to which they relate.
If the speaker is ignorant of the name of a person or a thing and asks for it, he uses who, which, or what; as, Who did that? These pronouns, used in asking questions, are called +Interrogative Pronouns+. ”

“ but take breath and read it with the ears, as I always wish to be read, and my verse becomes all right.'
Obscurity As regards Oddity then, it is plain that the poet was Himself fully alive to it, but he was not sufficiently aware of obscurity, and he could not understand why his friends found his sentences so difficult: he would never have believed that, among all the ellipses and liberties of his grammar, the one chief cause is his habitual omission of the relative pronoun; ”

“ The demonstrative or personal pronoun is the substantive in another form.—The two propositions (1) the man is come; (2) he rides= (1) the man is come; (2) the man rides.
4. Hence the relative is the equivalent to a demonstrative pronoun, or to a substantive, indifferently.
5. But the relative is the equivalent to the pronoun and substantive, and something more. In sentences like
The man is come—he rides—
The man is come—the man rides.
The identity between the person mentioned in the two propositions is implied, not expressed. ”

“ This grammatical liberty, though it is a common convenience Omission of relative pronounin conversation and has therefore its proper place in good writing, is apt to confuse the parts of speech, and to reduce a normal sequence of words to mere jargon. Writers who carelessly rely on their elliptical speech-forms to govern the elaborate sentences of their literary composition little know what a conscious effort of interpretation they often impose on their readers. ”

“ The personal pronouns, whether nominative or accusative, always come after the yerb; as, molann sé ṫú, he praises you.
533. The disjunctive forms of the personal pronouns are used immediately after the verb IS in any of its forms expressed or understood; as, is é an fear láidir é. He is a strong man. An é a fuair é? Was it he who found it? Naċ í d’ inġean í? Is she not your daughter?
534. A personal pronoun which stands for a sentence, or part of a sentence, is third person singular, masculine gender. An rud aduḃairt mé, is é adeirim arís. ”

“ The pronouns their and they should be singular.
“Everybody has something to say which they think is worthy of being heard.” Everybody refers to persons singly, and not collectively. They think should be he thinks, he being the proper pronoun to employ when the gender is not indicated. ”

“ In the pronoun we find often a much more rigid adherence to the series of three persons than the one that we apply, in so far as the distinction is carried through in the pronominal plural and in the demonstrative. ”

“ The demonstrative pronoun is, ea, id, as we learned in § 115, is regularly used as the personal pronoun of the third person (he, she, it, they, etc.) . 280. The personal pronouns of the first person are ego, I ”

“ All have suffixes to show relation; a dual in substantives, adjectives, and pronouns; no sibilant sounds, no auxiliary verb, no passive voice, no “h,” they abound in the pleonastic, and distinguish genders by postfixes. The only point of agreement is in the first personal pronoun, “I” ”

“ Indeed, an eminent linguist has been so impressed with this feature that he has proposed to classify them distinctively as “pronominal languages.” They have many classes of pronouns, sometimes as many as eighteen, which is more than twice as many as the Greek. There is often no distinction between a noun and a verb other than the pronoun which governs it. That is, if a word is employed with one form of the pronoun it becomes a noun, if with another pronoun, it becomes a verb.
We have something of the same kind in English. In the phrase, “I love,” love is a verb; but in “my love,” it is a noun. ”

“ A common inaccuracy is the use of the plural pronoun when the antecedent is a distributive expression such as each, each one, everybody, every one, many a man, which, though implying more than one person, requires the pronoun to be in the singular. ”

“ And, in the opinion of any judicious teacher, an erroneous classification of words so common and so important as these, may well go far to condemn any system of grammar in which it is found. A pronoun agrees in person, number, and gender, with the noun for which it is a substitute ”

“ In such a phrase there is always a substantive, and if this is changed to a personal pronoun we find that it is in the objective case; for example, “A writer is so like a [Pg 155] lover.”—Holmes. Substituting a pronoun for lover we find that usage calls for the objective form him. Does this prove that like is a preposition and him its object? ”

“ We call them pronouns, to avoid the inconvenience of supposing and supplying an infinite multitude of ellipses. But who, though often equivalent (as above) to an adjective and a noun, is never itself used adjectively; it is always a pronoun.
OBS. 5.—In respect to who or whom, it sometimes makes little or no difference to the sense, whether we take it as a demonstrative pronoun equivalent to what person, or suppose it to relate to an antecedent understood before it: as, "Even so the Son quickeneth whom he will."—John, v, 21. ”

“ When a noun is used which may refer indifferently to both sexes, the accepted practice is to use the masculine pronoun. For example, say: Let the teacher do his duty and he need not fear criticism, not Let the teacher do his or her duty and he or she need not fear criticism.
Similarly after indefinite singulars like each, every, somebody, anybody, use the masculine singular pronoun. Thus, Everyone should do his duty and he should do it every day. Here one is not only to avoid the use of he or she and his or her, but also particularly and constantly to be on guard against they and their. ”

“ PERSONS The pronoun of the FIRST person is ob, I; plural, obs, we.
When the verb is in the first person the pronoun is united with it as a person ending, forming one word. Binob, I am;
pükob, I speak; kömobs, we come; golobs, we go.
The pronoun of the SECOND person is ol, thou or you (singular) ; ols, you, plural. ”

“ The POSSESSIVE PRONOUN, when applied to anything which has no relation to our body, is the genitive of the personal pronoun, placed after the noun: purpur rak—my hat; naun rom—thy house; ton rok—his hatchet; mad romad—our clothes ”

“ The endings sen, seln, sens are chiefly confined to the n.Midl. dialects. The endings self, selves are hardly ever used in Sc. Irel. n.Cy. and n.Midlands. Frequently the objective case of the simple personal pronoun is used with a reflexive meaning, especially in Sc. n.Cy. and n.Midl., as: get thee dressed while I wash me. In Sc. theirsel is used when the idea is collective, theirsels when it is segregate. ”

“ Persons who are in doubt as to which form of the pronoun to use often try to avoid the difficulty by using one of the pronouns ending in "-self"—pronouns which have the same form for both the nominative and the objective case. ”

“ For example he says in a Letter to the Governors, Instructors, and Trustees of the Universities and other Seminaries of Learning in the United States, "According to the grammars, the pronoun you, being originally plural, must always be followed by a plural verb, though referring to a single person. ”

“ Singular or Plural Pronouns. [62] —The rule that a pronoun should be in the same number as its antecedent is violated most commonly in connection with such expressions as "any one," "each," "either," "every," "man after man," "neither," "nobody." Grammatically such expressions are singular.
"He" ("his," "him") may stand for mankind in general and include women as well as men. ”

“ Sentences like "She invited Mrs. R. and I to go driving" are common, even among people generally well-informed. Such mistakes will be avoided if the speaker stops to think what the form would be if the pronoun were not coupled with a noun. ”

“ A Pronoun is a word used instead of a noun, to avoid repeating the same word; as, Pahpenatum eneneh, the man is happy; Pahpenatum, he is happy.
PERSONAL PRONOUNS.
There are three personal pronouns, viz. Neen, I; keen, thou; ween, he; with their plurals, Nenahwind, we; kenahwah, ye or you; wenahwah, they.
Personal pronouns have person, number, gender and case.
The persons of pronouns are three in each number, viz.
Number.—Pronouns have two numbers, the singular and the plural. ”

“ The independent personal pronouns are the forms used when the pronoun is not immediate­ly dependent on a noun, a verb or an inflected prepo­sition. They occur (a) at the beginning of a sentence, see § 162 vii (2) ;— (b) after a conjunc­tion or un­inflected prepo­sition, including fel, megis;— (c) after ys ‘it is’, mae (mai) ‘that it is’, panyw id., pei ‘if it were’, etc., and after the un­inflected heb y ‘said’ (heb y mi § 198 i) . Inde­pendent personal pronouns are either simple, redupli­cated or conjunc­tive; thus:
i. Simple: sg. 1. mi, 2. ti, 3. m. ef, f. hi; pl. 1. ni, 2. chw̯i, 3. Ml. ”

“ Me will go with you to the woods,” the faultiness of which is evident. The answer should be “I.”
After “Than” and “As”
The objective pronoun is often incorrectly used for the nominative after than or as.
“He can swim better than me.” The complete sentence would be, “He can swim better than I can swim.” The omission of the verb can swim affords no reason for changing I to me.
“He is no better than me.” Say, “He is no better than I,” meaning, I am.
“They are common people, such as you and me.” Such people “as you and I are.” The pronoun should be I, not me. ”

“ Pronouns Referring to Ideas.—Probably the most prolific cause of bad grammar and of obscurity of meaning in news writing may be found in the use of unclear pronouns. One or more instances may be found in almost every paper a reader examines. A reporter should assure himself that every pronoun he uses refers to a particular word in the sentence and that it agrees with that word in gender and number. The use of a pronoun to refer to a general idea not expressed in a particular word is one of the commonest causes of ambiguity and obscurity in newspaper work. ”

“ While the noun is at first concrete, the pronoun is abstract, and thus represents psychologically a much higher concept than the noun. That it is of later development than the noun seems clear from its composite or suppletive inflection, being made up of a number of stems, still seen, for instance, in I, me, we, us. ”

“ The answer, it must be granted, commonly contains a noun, corresponding in some respects to the interrogative pronoun, and agreeing with it in case; but this noun cannot be supposed to control the interrogation, nor is it, in any sense, the word for which the pronoun stands. For every pronoun must needs stand for something that is uttered or conceived by the same speaker; nor can any question be answered, until its meaning is understood. Interrogative pronouns must therefore be explained as direct substitutes for such other terms as one might use in stead of them. Thus who means what person? ”