Study material for the TOEIC®, Part 6

This page © 1997 by Nicholas E. Miller

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Part 6: Identifying Grammar Errors

Grammar: Pronouns

As we covered in a previous paper, the word pronoun comes from the Latin pro (for or in the place of) and nomen (name). So a pronoun is a word that can take the place of nouns, noun phrases or even other pronouns.

There are many types of pronouns:

Demonstrative:
The demonstrative pronouns are those two little words, this and that, along with their plurals, these and those. Unlike Japanese and some other languages which have three forms, English has only these two forms, for that nearby and that far away.

Indefinite:
A pronoun that refers to animals, people or things in a general way. A few of the more common ones include: all, another, any, anybody, both, each, either, every, everybody, everything, few, little, many, much, nobody, none, one, several, some, somebody, someone and something. This is not the entire list, just the more common ones.

Interrogative:
An interrogative pronoun is one which is used to ask a question. They are: what, which, and who. Where, when, why and how are also interrogatives, but they are adverbs.

Personal:
The most common and simplest type. See below for a list.

Relative:
Relative pronouns are those which act as both pronouns and conjunctions. See the handout on them for more information.

Personal Pronouns:

On a previous handout you were given the following list. It might be good to spend a few moments looking at it once again:

.
Nominative
Possessive
Objective

First Person, Singular
I
my or mine
me

Second Person, Singular
you
your or yours
you

Third Person, Singular
he, she, it
his, her or hers, its
him, her, it

First Person, Plural
we
our or ours
us

Second Person, Plural
you
your or yours
you

Third Person, Plural
they
their or theirs
them

It should be added that an additional class of reflexive pronouns also exist. Please see the handout on them for more details.

Care should be taken to avoid using similar sounding words for the pronoun concerned, some of these are not common, but others cause many mistakes, even among native speakers. The most common are marked with an *. Here is the list:

Right
Wrong
Right
Wrong
Right
Wrong

I
aye, eye
.
.
.
.

you
ewe, yew
your
you're*
you
ewe, yew

.
.
its
it's*
him
hymn

we
wee
our, ours
hour, hours
.
.

.
.
their
there, they're
.
.

The most important point for the test is to be sure to use the correct word in the correct place in the sentence.

C/D

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