The duplication of the proper nounsFredandMacarenajust does not sound
right to most people because English generally does not allow it. The dupli-
cated nouns are replaced, as in sentence 5a:
5a. Fred liked Macarena, so he took her to a movie.Notice that sentence 5b also is acceptable:5b. He liked her, so Fred took Macarena to a movie.In this instance, however, sentence 5b is not quite asappropriateas 5a because
the sentence lacks a context. Real sentences, as opposed to those that appear in
books like this one, are part of a context that includes the complexities of human
relationships; prior knowledge related to past, present, and future events; and, of
course, prior conversations. The pronouns in sentence 5b suggest thatFredand
Macarenaalready have been identified or are known. This suggestion is contrary
to fact. In sentence 5a, on the other hand,FredandMacarenaappear in the first
part of the sentence, so the pronouns are linked to these antecedents without any
doubt or confusion about which nouns the pronouns have replaced. At work is an
important principle for pronouns:They should appear as close to their anteced-
ents as possible to avoid potential confusion.
Personal Pronouns
Pronouns that replace a duplicated noun are referred to aspersonalorcommon
pronouns. The common pronouns are:
Singular:I, me, you, he, him, she, her, it
Plural:we, us, you, they, themIn addition, there are several other types of pronouns:demonstrative, recip-
rocal, possessive, indefinite, reflexive,andrelative.Possessive and relative pro-
nouns are examined in detail later in the book, with special attention paid to
relatives because they are part of an interesting construction called arelative
clause.Therefore, discussion of these types here is brief.
Case. Before going forward with the discussion of pronouns, we need to
pause and explorecase.The functional relations in sentences are important in all
languages, but not all languages signify those relations in the same way. English
relies primarily on word order. On a basic level, we know that subjects normally
come before the verb and that objects normally come after. Other languages,
TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR 61