First Grammar Lessons: Part IV, Lesson IX

Lesson IX

The pronouns we have had are called personal, because they are used instead of the names of persons.

There is another class of pronouns, not quite so useful, because the nouns they stand for must always go before them.

The boy who hurt his sister was very sorry.

Who is the pronoun, and it stands for “boy,” which, you see, goes just before it.

For this reason the nouns that go before these pronouns are called their antecedents, which is the Latin way of saying their go-befores.

Boy and who are two words for the same person, so they must be alike in most ways.

Boy is a he—masculine.

Who must be the same.

Boy means one—singular.

Who is the same.

Boy, we speak of, the third person.

So Who is the third person also.

These pronouns, which are like relations to their antecedents, and are therefore called relative pronouns, are like their antecedents in gender, number and person, because they are just other words for the same person or thing.

They would be always in the same case, only, as you will see presently, they are never in the same sentence as their antecedents.

To be learnt.

Relative pronouns are like their antecedents in number, gender and person.

Exercise IX

1. Find the antecedents to the relative pronouns in sentences such as:

The boy who went by was whistling.

2. Give four sentences in which relatives must supply the blanks, as:

The boys _____ are diligent will be rewarded.

3. Give the gender, number, and person of the relative pronouns in given sentences.

4. Supply relative pronouns to say something more about the subject in such sentences as:

That little girl _____ _____ _____ is my cousin.
(That little girl who is smiling at me, who is sitting on a gate, etc., is my cousin.)

5. Find the relative pronouns and their antecedents in a page of your reading book.

6. Make sentences using a relative pronoun with each of the following nouns:

the gardener, the fisherman’s boy, my aunt.