Last week we talked about nouns. Nouns work as a subject or an object in a sentence.
A subject noun does something. An object noun is acted upon – something happens to it.
A pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun. Here are some common pronouns:
he, she, it, him, her, I, me, we, us, they, them, his, hers, its, my, mine, our, ours, their, theirs
These pronouns take the place of nouns in a sentence, and we use them often.
However, we need an antecedent in front of each pronoun so the reader knows what noun the pronoun is replacing.
Look at this sentence:
He gave it to her.
The sentence has three pronouns: He, it, her
But we don’t know who He, it, and her are. The sentence makes no sense.
That’s why we use antecedents with pronouns.
An antecedent is a noun that comes before a pronoun. We substitute the pronoun for that antecedent noun.
Look at this sentence:
John picked a flower for Susie.
This sentence has no pronouns. It has only nouns: John, flower, Susie
If we put the sentence with nouns first, the sentence with pronouns makes more sense.
John picked a flower for Susie.
He gave it to her.
Now we know that He is John, it is a flower, and her refers to Susie.
John is the antecedent of He.
Flower is the antecedent of it.
Susie is the antecedent of she.
In other words, John is the noun that goes with the pronoun he, flower is the noun that goes with the pronoun it, and Susie is the noun that goes with the pronoun her.
When we use pronouns, we must always use a noun first that the pronoun will replace. The noun that comes before the pronoun is called the antecedent.