Pronouns and referencing (personal, possessive and reflexive pronouns; avoiding repetition)

1. Personal and possessive pronouns

Subject personal pronouns:	I, you, he, she, it, we, they
Object personal pronouns:	me, you, him, her, it, us, them
Possessive pronouns:	mine, yours, his, hers, ours, theirs

We use pronouns to replace nouns and avoid repetition of the noun:

I can introduce you to my friend, Yi Ling. She‘s a student from Taiwan. ( not Yi Ling’s a student)

We use subject pronouns before verbs:

I only arrived last month.

and object pronouns after verbs or prepositions:

I have had a lot of students staying with me over the years.

We use possessive pronouns to replace a possessive determiner and a noun:

I don’t have a phone here. Can I use yours? (= your phone)

⚠️Its is not used as a possessive pronoun.

Reflexive pronouns

Reflexive pronouns: myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves

We use reflexive pronouns

• when the subject and the object of the verb are the same:
  You can prepare yourself a packed lunch if you like.
• to add emphasis to the subject or object:
  I clean the kitchen and the living areas myself. (= I do it, not anybody else)
• with by to mean on my own/ on your own etc.:
  I clean the kitchen and the living areas by myself. (= on my own)
• after some set expressions in the imperative with yourself/yourselves:
  Help yourself; Look after yourself (= be careful); Enjoy yourselves

⚠️Notice the use of each other/ one another below:

The boys taught themselves English. (= each boy taught himself English)
The boys taught each other/ one another some new words. (= each boy taught the other boy some new words)

Some special situations

It

We can use it

• as a subject to start a sentence without carrying any meaning. Often the sentences are about the weather, the time or distance:

It didn’t always rain; It‘s five o’clock; It‘s 10 km from the sea.

• to start sentences when the real subject is an infinitive or an -ing form:

It won’t take long to settle in. (= to settle in won’t take long)

• to refer to phrases, whole sentences or ideas:

I only arrived last month and I am still finding it all a bit strange, actually. (= living in a foreign country)

⚠️We use there + be + noun phrase to show something exists ( or doesn’t exist), not it:

There’s a good coffee shop near here. (not It is a good coffee shop near here)

You and we

To talk about everybody in general we can use

• you: In Australia you often eat sandwiches for lunch. (= people in Australia)
• we (when we include ourselves in the group):
  We often eat lunch in a bit of a hurry. (= Australian people in general, and the speaker is Australian)

They

We can use they

• to mean experts or authorities:
  They have changed the law recently. (= the government)
  They have discovered a new kind of beetle. (= scientists)
• when we do not know or do not need to say if the person is male or female:
  I asked a student if they liked learning English and they said no!

One/ones
We can use one/ones to avoid repetition of a countable noun:

I do have a few rules. The most important one is that I want everyone to feel at home. (= the most important rule)