But such expressions as this morning, next Monday, last Friday, last year, next June, any day, every day, some day, are used adverbially, without a preposition : 1. We shall go home this afternoon. 2. Last Saturday I saw Julia and her mother. 53. Adverbial noun and object. An adverbial noun should not be confused with the object of the verb: 1. I rested an hour (adverb); I rested my horse (object). 2. The cloth measures five yards (adverb); she measures the cloth (object). 3. The coal weighs a ton (adverb); they weigh the coal (object). 54. Noun as adjective. Nouns are often used as adjectives (§ 383), but care should be taken not to use them inappropriately (§§ 153, 416); the headlines in newspapers are often faulty: 1. A collision of trains in Kentucky. (Not 'A Kentucky train crash '.) 2. Sale of skimmed milk to be permitted. (Not 'Skimmed milk sale', etc.) 3. The order of words. (Not 'The word order '.) 4. The Duchess of Manchester arrives. (Not 'The Manchester Duchess arrives '.) 5. A pronounced foe of Wilson. (Not 'A pronounced Wilson foe'.) 6. Threat of death. (Not 'Death threat'.) The expression 'death threat' is vague in meaning, unlike deathbed, deathblow, death chamber, and death knell, which are definite and clear. Similar faulty expressions are ' a marriage hope' (for 'a hope of marriage') and 'a bankruptcy fear' (for 'a fear of bankruptcy'). Carelessness in using nouns as adjectives leads to vagueness and obscurity both in expression and in thought. Study § 416. 7. The season has again arrived for discussing capital punishment. (Not 'The season for capital punishment discussion has again arrived'.) 8. Antivice crusade. (Not 'Vice crusade'.) In 'vice crusade' the trouble is not in the order of words, but in the sense, which is just the opposite of what is intended. The meaning of 'vice crusade' is a crusade for vice'. The author should have said 'antivice crusade'. 9. Sketches of travel. (Not 'Travel sketches'.) 10. The residence of the governor of New York. (Not 'The governor of New York's residence '.) 11. The elegant interior of the bank of Hawaii. (Not 'The bank of Hawaii's elegant interior'.) 12. He approved the suggestion for the celebration of victory. (Not 'the victory celebration suggestion '.) In the expressions in parentheses style has apparently been sacrificed to space. The seventh erroneous example has the clumsy adjective 'capital punishment', which should at least be hyphened; by being used as an adjective it loses force, and the emphasis is placed on 'discussion', where it should not be. The sentence may be turned into good English, with the proper emphasis, without the addition of a single letter: 'The season for discussing capital punishment has again arrived'. Still better emphasis may be obtained by placing 'capital punishment', the topic under discussion, at the end, and leading up to it (§370): 'The season has again arrived for discussing capital punishment'. (For the passive voice in this paragraph, see § 208, N.) (Exercises VII, VIII, §§ 552,553.) THE PRONOUN 55. Pronoun. A pronoun is a word used instead of a noun : Father wanted Mary; he (father) called her (Mary). 56. Pronoun or adjective. Some words which are properly pronouns are often used to modify nouns; they are then adjectives (§ 113; see § 383 also): 1. His pen had fallen from the table. (His modifies pen, and is therefore an adjective; see §§ 59, N., 67.) I have a pen. Dick has lost his. (His is used instead of his pen, and is therefore a pronoun, object of the verb lost.) 2. This scarf belongs to you. (Adjective.) This is your scarf. (Pronoun.) 3. Whose horse have you? (Adjective.) Whose have I? (Pronoun.) 57. Classification. According to their uses pronouns are divided into the following classes: personal (§ 58), possessive (§67), demonstrative (§ 70), interrogative (§ 75), relative (§ 81), compound relative (§98), indefinite (§ 101), intensive and reflexive (§ 109). THE PERSONAL PRONOUN 58. Person. A personal pronoun indicates the person speaking, the person or thing spoken to, or the person or thing spoken of. If it indicates the speaker, it is of the first person : I, me, we. If it indicates the person or thing spoken to, it is of the second person: thou, you. If it indicates the person or thing spoken of, it is of the third person: he, her, they. NOTE. By courtesy the speaker regularly puts the second person first, and himself last, in any combination: you and I; you and she; you, they, and we; he and I. See § 179. 59. Number; case. Personal pronouns have number (§ 23) and case (§ 40); but see the note (page 22): NOTE. The possessive forms (my, mine, thy, etc.) will be found classified as possessive pronouns (§§ 67, 68) and possessive adjectives (§ 118), according to their present use (§ 383; see § 608). This classification, recommended by the American and British joint committees on grammatical nomenclature, agrees with the treatment given to these words in the grammars of other languages studied in school and college. Thou, thee, and ye are now found chiefly in the Bible and in poetry: Thou shalt love thy neighbor. You is plural in form, and takes a plural verb. In the older language it was used in addressing two or more persons only, but is now regularly employed in addressing one person as well as more than one: 1. Dear cousins, you are (were) welcome. 2. Dear brother, you are (were; not 'was') welcome. 60. Gender. The forms he and him are masculine (but see the sixth example); she and her, feminine; it, neuter; the other forms (I, me, thou, thee, we, us, ye, you, they, them) are either masculine or feminine: 1. Frank is not here; he has gone home. 2. Where is Mary? Is she at school? 3. Mother looked for the pen, but did not find it. 4. I (Frank or Mary) live in Salem. 5. They (Frank, Mary, and mother) went to the theater. 6. Give to him that asketh thee. (When used in a general sense, as here, the masculine includes the feminine.) 61. Uses of it. The pronoun it has some peculiar uses (see § 89 also): a. It is Jane; it is father and mother; it is I, we, you, he, she, they. Is it I? Was it they? (It is here an indefinite subject meaning the person or the persons. For the case of I, we, etc., see § 158.) b. It (the air) is warm. It (today) is a holiday. It (things) went well with him. It rains; it snows. (It is here a vague subject, denoting a person or thing not definitely expressed. In such expressions as it rains the verb is called impersonal, that is, a verb not having a personal subject.) NOTE. In general, when the subject is definite, that subject should be used instead of the indefinite it (or they, § 366, B, 2, b) : My geography says so (not' It says so in my geography'); Business is dull today (not 'It is dull today'). c. We roughed it a whole year. (Colloquial; see § 380. It is here an indefinite object.) d. It is best to wait; it is doubtful when she will return; it is but seldom that he comes our way. (Here it appears to be the subject, but is not. The subjects are the phrase to wait and the subordinate clauses when she will return and that he comes our way. The pronoun it is merely an introductory or anticipatory subject, which introduces the sentence and permits the real subject to stand after the verb, in apposition, § 50. It is here an expletive, which means a filling out; an expletive is not necessary to the sense, but is useful for such purposes as clearness, euphony, softened statement, and force.) 62. Editorial we. The plural we (instead of the singular 1) is proper for an editor, because he represents the editorial staff; but the usage is not proper in ordinary speaking or writing: 1. We welcome the delegates to our city. (Editorial.) 2. I must now introduce my reader to the interior of the cottage. (Not 'we', 'our '.) NOTE. In regal and formal style we (and the singular ourself, §110) is used of one person: We will ourself take time to hear your cause. 63. Mistakes in case. Mistakes in using the proper cases of pronouns are very common. We should be careful not to use the nominative for the objective (accusative, §§ 604, 606), or the objective for the nominative (§ 158). Read aloud the following sentences (see § 361): |