Delahunty and Garvey
Exercise
- In the passage below (a) identify all the personal pronouns; (b) spec-
ify the antecedent of each pronoun; and (c) indicate the case, number,
and gender of each pronoun.
Hercules was the strongest man on earth and he had the supreme self-con-
fidence magnificent physical strength gives. He considered himself on an
equality with the gods—and with some reason. They needed his help to
conquer the Giants. In the final victory of the Olympians over the brutish
sons of Earth, Hercules’ arrows played an important part. He treated the
gods accordingly. Once when the priestess at Delphi gave no response to the
question he asked, he seized the tripod she sat on and declared that he would
carry it off and have an oracle of his own. Apollo, of course, would not put
up with this, but Hercules was perfectly willing to fight him and Zeus had to
intervene. The quarrel was easily settled, however. Hercules was quite good-
natured about it. He did not want to quarrel with Apollo, he only wanted an
answer from his oracle. If Apollo would give it the matter was settled as far
as he was concerned. Apollo on his side, facing this undaunted person, felt
an admiration for his boldness and made his priestess deliver the response.
(From Edith Hamilton, Mythology)- We hope that you noticed in the passage just above that (a) all of the
pronouns in the passage are in the third person and (b) they all have
an easily determined antecedent in the passage. Consider now first and
second person pronouns. Is it possible for them to have a verbal ante-
cedent, or do they always refer to some entity outside the text in which
they occur? (A word with this latter property is said to be “deictic,”
which we discuss further below.) Try to think of examples to support
your position. Does your analysis affect our definition of pronouns? - Briefly discuss the use of pronouns in the Hercules text in light of our
revised definition of pronoun and our discussion of pronoun use. - For each of the following pronouns give all the grammatical catego-
ries needed to fully characterize it: they, me, your, him, our, mine. For
example: hers—3rd person, singular, feminine, genitive case.
Demonstrative pronouns
English contains only four demonstrative pronouns; they appear in Table 3.