Babel Bible

22.01.23 · grammar / agreement

Pronoun case and reference

draft3 tiersLean: none

Anchor (Master): academic sources

Intuition [Beginner]

Pronouns change form depending on their job in the sentence. This is called case. There are two cases to know:

Subjective case (when the pronoun is the subject -- doing the action):

Subjective
I I walked home.
you You are late.
he He left early.
she She called back.
it It is raining.
we We won the game.
they They arrived yesterday.

Objective case (when the pronoun is the object -- receiving the action, or after a preposition):

Objective
me She called me.
you I saw you.
him Give it to him.
her Ask her.
it I found it.
us Join us.
them Call them.

Quick test: Use the pronoun alone. "She gave the book to (he/him)" -- "to him" sounds right, so it is "him."

Who vs. whom:

  • Who = subjective: "Who is calling?" (who is the subject)
  • Whom = objective: "To whom did you give it?" (whom is the object of "to")

Pronoun-antecedent agreement: A pronoun must match its antecedent (the noun it refers to) in number.

  • Singular antecedent, singular pronoun: "The student turned in her paper."
  • Plural antecedent, plural pronoun: "The students turned in their papers."
  • Wrong: "The student turned in their paper." (student is singular, their is plural -- this is common in informal speech but formally incorrect for a specific singular referent)

Vague pronoun reference: Every pronoun should clearly point to one noun. If the reader cannot tell which noun, the reference is vague.

  • Vague: "When Sarah met Lisa, she was nervous." (Who was nervous, Sarah or Lisa?)
  • Fix: "Sarah was nervous when she met Lisa."

Visual [Beginner]

PRONOUN CASE:

  SUBJECTIVE (subject of verb):         OBJECTIVE (object of verb/preposition):
    I     we                               me    us
    you   you                              you   you
    he    they                             him   them
    she                                     her
    it                                      it


  SIMPLE TEST:
    "___ and John went to the store."
    --> "He and John went to the store." (subjective)
    --> NOT "Him and John went to the store."

    "She gave the book to ___."
    --> "She gave the book to him." (objective, after preposition "to")
    --> NOT "She gave the book to he."


WHO vs. WHOM:

  WHO (subjective):  Who is at the door?
                      ^^ (subject of "is")

  WHOM (objective):  Whom did you call?
                      ^^^ (object of "call")
                     To whom did you speak?
                      ^^^ (object of "to")

  TRICK:  Replace with he/him.
          "___ did you call?" --> "You called him." --> whom
          "___ is at the door?" --> "He is at the door." --> who


PRONOUN-ANTENCEDENT AGREEMENT:

  Each student must turn in ___ paper.
       ^^^^^^^ (singular)          --> his or her paper

  All students must turn in ___ papers.
       ^^^^^^^^^ (plural)           --> their papers


VAGUE REFERENCE:

  "When Tom met Bob, he was angry."
                  ^^ --> Who? Tom or Bob?

  FIX: "Tom was angry when he met Bob."
  FIX: "When Tom met Bob, Tom was angry."

Worked example [Beginner]

1. Choose the correct pronoun: "(Me / I) and my brother went fishing."

  • Remove "and my brother" to test: "I went fishing" (not "Me went fishing").
  • Fix: "My brother and I went fishing." (polite order: others before "I")

2. Choose the correct pronoun: "The teacher gave (we / us) extra homework."

  • "gave" is a verb, "us" is its object = objective case.
  • "The teacher gave us extra homework."

3. Choose who or whom: "(Who / Whom) did you invite to the party?"

  • Rearrange: "You did invite whom" -- "whom" is the object of "invite."
  • "Whom did you invite to the party?"

4. Fix the agreement error: "Every player needs to bring their equipment."

  • "Every player" is singular. "Their" is plural.
  • Fix: "Every player needs to bring his or her equipment."
  • Alternative (increasingly accepted): "All players need to bring their equipment." (make antecedent plural)

5. Fix the vague reference: "The professor told the student that he needed to study harder."

  • Who needs to study harder, the professor or the student?
  • Fix: "The professor told the student to study harder." (remove the pronoun)
  • Fix: "The professor told the student that the student needed to study harder."

Check your understanding [Beginner]

Formal definition [Intermediate+]

Pronoun case in English is a two-way system for most personal pronouns:

Person Subjective Objective Possessive
1st sg I me my/mine
2nd sg you you your/yours
3rd sg masc he him his
3rd sg fem she her her/hers
3rd sg neut it it its
1st pl we us our/ours
2nd pl you you your/yours
3rd pl they them their/theirs

The subjective case is used when the pronoun functions as the subject of a finite clause, a subject complement, or a predicate nominative. The objective case is used when the pronoun functions as the direct object, indirect object, object of a preposition, or object of a verbals.

Who vs. whom. "Who" is the subjective form; "whom" is the objective form. The distinction parallels he/him:

  • "Who" as subject: "Who called?" (compare "He called.")
  • "Whom" as object: "Whom did you call?" (compare "You called him.")
  • "Whom" after preposition: "To whom did you speak?" (compare "You spoke to him.")

In contemporary English, "whom" is receding from informal usage. "Who did you call?" is common in speech, even though "whom" is prescriptively correct.

Pronoun-antecedent agreement requires that a pronoun match its antecedent in person, number, and (for third-person singular) gender. The rules:

Antecedent Pronoun Example
Singular masculine he/him/his The boy lost his book.
Singular feminine she/her/her The girl lost her book.
Singular neuter it/it/its The car lost its hubcap.
Plural they/them/their The students lost their books.
Indefinite (each, every, anyone) singular (prescriptively) Each student must bring his or her book.

Vague pronoun reference occurs when a pronoun could refer to more than one antecedent, or when the antecedent is unstated or too distant from the pronoun.

Key concepts [Intermediate+]

  1. The singular "they." The use of "they" for a singular antecedent ("Everyone should bring their book") has a long history in English (attested from the 14th century in writing, used by Chaucer, Shakespeare, Austen, and others). Prescriptive grammar since the 18th century has insisted on "his or her" for singular indefinite antecedents. Contemporary usage is shifting: most major style guides (APA, Chicago, MLA, AP) now accept singular "they" for indefinite antecedents, and "they" is also used as a preferred pronoun for non-binary individuals. The tension between prescription and usage remains active.

  2. Compound subjects and objects with pronouns. The common error "Me and him went to the store" arises from a processing conflict: in isolation, "me and him" is a valid coordination of objective pronouns. The error is using objective case where subjective case is required. The diagnostic test is to remove the compound: "Me went to the store" is clearly wrong, revealing the need for "I." Similarly, "between you and I" is a hypercorrection -- the speaker, taught that "I" is "more correct" than "me," applies it in the objective position after the preposition "between." Correct: "between you and me."

  3. Pronoun reference and discourse structure. Pronoun resolution depends on discourse structure, not just sentence-level grammar. In "The police arrested the suspect because he had committed a robbery," "he" resolves to "the suspect" based on pragmatic plausibility (suspects commit robberies, police do not). In "The police arrested the suspect because they had found evidence," "they" resolves to "the police" for the same reason. Syntax alone does not determine reference; pragmatics and world knowledge are involved.

  4. Case in coordinate structures. The case of a pronoun in a coordinate structure (e.g., "he and I" as subject) is determined by the grammatical function of the entire coordinate phrase, not by the pronoun's position within it. "He and I went" = both are subjective because the entire phrase "he and I" is the subject. "between him and me" = both are objective because the entire phrase is the object of the preposition.

Linguistic theory [Master]

Case theory and pronouns. In Government and Binding theory (Chomsky, 1981), pronouns differ from full noun phrases in that they must receive abstract Case (a syntactic licensing condition) but cannot be assigned inherent Case. Pronouns receive structural Case from their local structural position: nominative Case from the finite Inflection node (Tense), accusative Case from the verb or preposition that governs them. This explains the distribution of subjective vs. objective pronouns: "he" appears in subject position (assigned nominative by Tense), "him" appears in object position (assigned accusative by V or P).

The persistence of case marking only in pronouns (and not in full noun phrases, which have lost morphological case in English) reflects the defective nature of pronoun paradigms. Full noun phrases in English receive Case abstractly but show no overt morphology. Pronouns, as a closed class with suppletive forms, retain the morphological distinction.

The syntax and semantics of who/whom. The decline of "whom" in contemporary English reflects a broader trend: the loss of morphological case marking in English. "Whom" is the last productive objective case form in the interrogative/relative paradigm. In many varieties of English, "whom" has been fully replaced by "who" in all positions. The prescriptive insistence on "whom" is a case of overt prestige -- using "whom" signals education and formality rather than encoding a necessary grammatical distinction.

Binding theory and pronoun reference. Chomsky's (1981) Binding Theory provides three principles that govern the interpretation of noun phrases:

  • Principle A: Anaphors (reflexives: myself, yourself, themselves) must be bound in their local domain. "She hurt herself" (herself is bound by she within the same clause).
  • Principle B: Pronouns must be free in their local domain. "She hurt her" (her refers to someone other than she).
  • Principle C: Referential expressions (full noun phrases) must be free everywhere.

These principles explain why "He said that John left" is acceptable (he and John can be different people, because the pronoun is free in its local clause) but "John said that he left" allows "he" to be John (the pronoun is free in its clause and can corefer with a name outside it).

Vague reference and centering theory. Centering Theory (Grosz, Joshi, & Weinstein, 1995) models how pronouns are resolved in discourse. Each utterance establishes a set of centers (salient discourse entities). Pronouns preferentially refer to the most salient (preferred) center. Vague reference occurs when multiple entities are equally salient, making the preferred center ambiguous. The theory predicts that pronoun resolution is easier when the preferred center of the current utterance matches the preferred center of the previous utterance (center continuity).

Historical context [Master]

Old English had a full case system with nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative cases for nouns and pronouns. The pronoun paradigms were richer than today: the first person singular had ic (nominative), me (accusative/dative), and min (genitive). The distinction between subjective and objective pronoun forms is a survival of this older case system.

The loss of case morphology in English nouns occurred gradually between Old English and Middle English (roughly 11th-14th centuries), driven by phonological reduction of final syllables that had carried case endings. Pronouns, as a closed class with suppletive and often phonologically distinct forms, resisted this reduction and retained their case distinctions.

The who/whom distinction reflects the same historical preservation. Old English hwa (nominative) and hwone (accusative) / hwaem (dative) were distinct forms. These collapsed into who and whom in Middle English, with whom serving as the general objective form. The gradual loss of whom in informal speech continues the centuries-long trend of case reduction.

The singular "they" has been attested in English writing since the 14th century. Chaucer uses it in The Canterbury Tales ("And whoso fyndeth hym out of swich blame, / They wol come up"). The Oxford English Dictionary's earliest citation for singular "they" is from 1375. The prescriptive prohibition dates to the 18th century: Anne Fisher's A New Grammar (1745) proposed using "he" as the generic pronoun for indefinite antecedents, and this was picked up by subsequent grammarians. The prohibition has never fully succeeded in displacing singular "they" from actual usage.

Pronoun-antecedent agreement as a formal rule was codified by Lindley Murray (1795) and other 18th-century grammarians. Before this period, number agreement between pronouns and antecedents was more flexible, especially with collective nouns and indefinite antecedents.

Bibliography [Master]

  • Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures on Government and Binding. Foris.
  • Fisher, A. (1745). A New Grammar. Newcastle.
  • Grosz, B.J., Joshi, A.K., & Weinstein, S. (1995). Centering: A framework for modeling the local coherence of discourse. Computational Linguistics, 21(2), 203-225.
  • Huddleston, R. & Pullum, G.K. (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge University Press.
  • Murray, L. (1795). English Grammar: Adapted to the Different Classes of Learners. D. & S. Collins.
  • Wales, K. (1996). Personal Pronouns in Present-Day English. Cambridge University Press.