Lesson Transcript

Hi, everybody! My name is Alisha. In this lesson, I'm going to talk about personal pronouns and possessive pronouns and we're going to do a short quiz on how to use them. Let's get started!
Okay, I want to begin by talking about personal pronouns. Over here, I have the subject and object personal pronouns, so there are two types in this side.
So first, a subject pronoun.
We should use the subject pronoun when the pronoun acts as the subject of the clause. So remember, the subject of a clause is like the person or the thing that's doing some action. There's something happening and the subject is the thing that's doing that. So, it's like they're the actor, kind of.
Then, the object pronoun.
We should use the object pronoun when it's the object of a verb. So remember, the object of a verb is the person or the thing that's like receiving some action. So, that means there's someone or something doing an action, the subject, and there's something receiving the action, that's the object. So, we have subject pronouns and object pronouns.
Let's look at this list then.
So, when the subject of the sentence or the subject is "I," we use the "I" personal pronoun. But, when it's acting as the object receiving something, we use me. We'll see this in an example sentence, in just a moment. The subject pronoun for a group of people is "we." The object pronoun is "us." For a man, the subject pronoun "he," singular man. The object pronoun, "him." For a woman, the subject pronoun is "she," the object pronoun is "her." For a group of people away from us, not connected to us, the subject pronoun is "they," they. When there's the object, it's "them." The last two on this list are "you" and "it." I have them in the subject pronoun column here, but "you" and "it" are also the object pronouns. So that means, there's no change here, so subject or object, "you" or "it," they're the same. There's no change.
So, now let's try to use this in a quiz. So, I made a few sample sentences that use subjects and objects. So, let's use the correct pronouns to finish these sentences.
The first one…
"(I / Me) gave (he / him) a pen."
Okay, so here, I have this verb "gave." Let's begin here. That means the subject of the sentence is here. I have these two pronouns to choose from, (I / Me). I know that this in the subject position because there's something happening. There's a verb here and there's something like something receiving the action later in the sentence. So, if I look here, I find my subject pronoun, "I." I know that "I" is the correct answer here.
So, "I gave…," here, I have (he / him) to choose from.
I know that "here," because it's following the verb, I know that this is something receiving an action. That means it's the object of this verb. So, when my choices are (he / him), I can look over here and find the object pronoun. The answer then is "him."
So, "I gave him a pen," is the correct sentence.
Let's look at another example.
(She / her) told (I / me) the news.
So again, we have this subject at the beginning of the sentence, our verb "told" and some object (I / me). So, to decide which is correct here, (she / her), let's look at the chart. Subject, "she," so we know that "she" is the correct answer here. She told (I / me), so again, this is the object of the verb "told," the thing that's receiving the action, so we should look over here and find the object and the object column is "me."
"She told me the news," is the correct sentence.
Okay, onto the next one.
"(They / them) took (we / us) to the park."
Okay, so here, subject, verb is "took," object is over here. So (they / them), subject, let's look in the column. We see "they" is the subject pronoun here.
So, "they took (we / us)," so here is my object. If I look over here, I find "us" is in the object column over here.
So, they took us to the park, is the correct sentence.
Okay, let's look at the last one here.
"You helped (they / them) with homework?"
So this is a question. Here, we don't need to make a decision because the subject is "you." So, we know that "you" does not change. If it's the subject, it's "you." If it's the "object," it's "you," so there's no choice to make here, "you."
So, "you helped…," the object; however, does require we make a choice. "You helped they" or "you helped them." So here, we see the object is "them" in this case.
So, the final sentence is…
"You helped them with homework?"
So, this is a simple way to show how to decide which pronoun to use. Is it the subject or the object of your clause?
Okay, so with this in mind, let's continue to a different set of pronouns that might be commonly related to these pronouns or commonly used together with these pronouns. These are dependent and independent possessive pronouns. So what does this mean? First, a dependent possessive pronoun needs to be used with a noun, together with a noun. You'll often see it just before the noun as we'll see in some example sentences.
An independent possessive pronoun does not need a noun. So, an independent possessive pronoun takes the place of a noun and adds possession. So, it means the noun plus like ownership, some kind of possessive meaning.
So, let's take a look at what this means. So, I talked about, over here, the subject and object pronouns, depending on if it's myself, a group of people we're part of, a man, or a woman, or people outside us. We can apply that to possessive pronouns now here too.
So, if I want to say something belongs to me, I can use "my" for a dependent possessive pronoun or "mine," for an independent possessive pronoun.
If I want to talk about something belonging to a group of people that I'm connected to, the dependent is "our," the independent is "ours."
If I want to talk about something belonging to a man, I can use "his." You'll notice, there is no independent one here. We use the same pronoun for dependent and independent, so there's no change in this case.
If I want to talk about something belonging to a woman, I can use "her" for a dependent and "hers" for the independent pronoun.
For something belonging to a group of people I'm not connected to, I can say it's "their" for a dependent pronoun and "theirs" for the independent pronoun.
Next, something belonging to you, if I want to use the dependent version, version, I say it's "your (something)." To talk with an independent pronoun, I would use "yours."
Finally, "its," its, something belonging to an object would be "its." So, there's no change between dependent and independent pronouns.
So, let's practice now using these. So what's the difference between using a dependent or an independent pronoun. Actually, in terms of meaning, there generally isn't such a big difference. It's up to you to decide if you prefer to use a dependent or an independent one. Let's take a look.
"This is (my / mine) pen."
"This is (my / mine) pen."
So, how do we decide here? We know that independent pronouns take the place of a noun, like we saw, we talked about here. They take the place of a noun and they add possession. So, we see a noun here, "pen." Pen is my noun, so I know that an independent pronoun should not be used here because I see the noun. I can't use the noun together with the independent pronoun like this, just before the noun. So, I know that it has to be the dependent one. So, this is "my pen," not this is "mine pen."
I could say…
"This pen is mine."
That's okay because it's like saying, this pen is my pen, kind of. So, it sounds a little bit redundant. Redundant means like repetitive or repeating. But when we're using before the noun, we should use the dependent pronoun.
Okay, let's take a look at the next one.
"Is that bag (her / hers)?"
Here, a big hint, is that the pronoun comes after the noun. Here, we see "bag" is the noun. I see "her," my dependent pronoun, which comes before the noun and I see "hers," the independent pronoun. So I know that it should be this one because it's not placed before the noun and it's like taking the place of the noun.
I could say, like…
"Is that bag her bag?" for example.
But, "Is that bag hers?"
It implies possession and that we're still talking about the bag there.
Okay, let's move along to the next one, similar pattern.
"Which one of these is (your / yours)?"
So, this is a common sentence actually, a common question. "Which one of these…," these, so "these" stands in for a group of objects. So, for example, drinks or it could be shirts or pens, for example, books. Which one of these, these objects here, is yours? So again, there is nothing before my noun here. I don't have something that's coming before my noun; instead, it's following. So which one of these is yours?
We need to use the independent one here because it's not coming before the noun.
So which one of these is yours?
Don't forget that S sound as well.
Okay, one more example.
"I completely forgot (our / ours) keys."
So here, my noun, keys. "Keys" is the noun and our big hint, the pronoun comes before the noun. So, I know, it should be the dependent pronoun which is "our" in this case.
"I completely forgot our keys," here.
Okay, so this is a quick introduction to possessive pronouns and to personal pronouns, the subject and object. So, I hope that this is helpful for you in figuring out how to choose which pronoun to use. I know there are a lot of them, but I think, some good things that you can do to practice this are reading, actually is the big one. Reading and and also just try to make your own sentences. I think, a lot of these very simple everyday sentences can help with this.
If you have any questions or comments or if you want to practice making some sentences with this grammar point, please feel free to do so in the comment section of this video. Thanks very much for watching this lesson and I will see you again, soon. Bye-bye.

Comments

Hide