In this short video, we'll be discussing pronoun agreement in number and gender.
Before we start, there two definitions that you need to know. The first word is
a 'pronoun' which is a word that replaces a noun.
Some examples are 'he/she' 'them' 'it' 'theirs' These are all pronouns. Another word
you need to know is 'antecedent.' An antecedent is the noun that a pronoun is
being used to represent. We look at a quick example, 'The guitar is expensive. It
was made by the Gibson company." So , the 'guitar' is a noun in the first sentence
and it is replaced by the pronoun 'it'. So 'it' is a pronoun. Guitar is the antecedent.
So pronouns in English give us two important pieces of information. They
tell us the number or how many, and they also tell us the gender, whether it's
male female or no gender. So, for example 'it' tells us that it's referring to one
thing. 'They' is for more than one thing. 'She' refers to one person. 'Them' refers to
more than one thing or person. Pronouns also indicate gender. For example, 'he'
refers to a male. 'Her' refers to a female. 'It' refers to no gender. So in
English all pronouns must agree in number and gender with its antecedent. So
let's take a look at some examples to see what that means.
"Julie has been in the library for four hours. She is studying for her exam." So we
have 'Julie' as a the noun in the first sentence, the subject of this first
sentence, actually Julie is a female and it's only this is only referring to one
female, so the pronoun we use is 'she.' 'She' shows
us that it's referring to a female and also it's a singular pronoun, so it's
referring to only one female. "Grammar textbooks are sometimes long and boring
to read. They are not very popular among students." Se have a plural
'grammar textbooks' in the first sentence and then we have the pronoun 'they' in the
second sentence, so 'they' refers to 'grammar textbooks,' so 'they' can be
actually used for both people and things. "The teacher told the students to study.
He also told them not to procrastinate." So we have the 'teacher' and now 'he' is in
the second sentence is referring back to 'the teacher' and then 'them' in the second
sentence is referring back to 'students,' so you can see that both subject
pronouns and object pronouns both have to agree in number and gender. Let's look
at a couple more examples. "The car on the street is being towed away. It was parked
illegally." We have 'the car' in the first sentence and then the pronoun 'it'
referring back to the car in the second sentence. "The teacher takes the bus to
work every day. His students sometimes see him on the way to work." So, we have
the teacher in the first sentence. 'The teacher' is the noun and then we have
this possessive adjective 'his' before the noun 'students' so this 'his' is referring
to 'the teacher' so 'the teacher' is male.
Errors in pronoun agreement are pretty common especially in writing, so let's
take a look at a sentence with a problem in pronoun number agreement. "A student
can become a great writer with a lot of practice. How long this takes depends on
their motivation and perseverance." So you can see that the noun in the first
sentence is 'a student.' It's singular, but then what we've used in the second
sentence as a possessive adjective is a plural possessive adjective, so this
sentence is not in agreement. This pronoun is not an agreement with the
antecedent. So let's look at the correct version. So we can say "A student can
become a great writer with a lot of practice. How long this takes depends on
his or her motivation and perseverance. So by changing 'their' to 'his or her' now
the pronouns are in agreement with the antecedent 'a student.'
We could also change this sentence or correct this sentence in this way:
"Students can become great writers with a lot of practice. How long this takes
depends on their motivation and perseverance." In academic writing this is
the better choice. Change any singular nouns to plural so that we can avoid
using 'his or her.' Let's take a look at one more incorrect sentence. "Everyone
must have their textbook by the second class meeting." 'Everyone' is singular and
'their' is a plural possessive adjective, so again we have a problem with
agreement, so the correction would be "Everyone must have his or her textbook
by the second class meeting. And that's just a little bit about pronoun
agreement in number and gender.