English Language Learners Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for speakers of other languages learning English. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
While going through this website I came across the following sentence under 'Indirect Object':
It was the cat’s birthday, so the dog bought her a present.
How is her referring to cat ? Isn't birthday the only noun in the first clause and 'cat's' is being used as a modifier ?
Wouldn't the correct version be something like :
It was the cat's birthday, so the dog bought a present for the cat.
It was the cat’s birthday, so the dog bought her a present.
In this standalone sentence, there are only two things that could be referred to by her: the cat and the dog.
This leaves two possibilities:
It was the cat's birthday, so the dog bought (the dog) a present.
There are a couple of problems with this interpretation:
It was the cat's birthday, so the dog bought (the cat) a present.
By the process of elimination, this is the only likely interpretation remaining. It is also positively supported by virtue of the fact that it is the cat's birthday—making the cat the likely recipient of any present.
So, there are really the only two sentences that would make sense:
1. It was the cat's birthday, but the dog bought herself a present instead. [Herself refers to the dog.]
2. It was the cat's birthday, so the dog bought her a present. [Her refers to the cat.]
Since the wording of the actual sentence is that of the second interpretation, the second interpretation is the only one that makes any real sense.
There is no explicit certainty of the referent of any pronoun. It's always possible to come up with some outlandish context for a pronoun to actually be referring to something other than what it was intended to refer to. But unless there are reasonable grounds for uncertainty, you can assume that it's referring to what it makes sense for it to be referring to.
This has nothing to do with understanding, but everything to do with grammar rules.
READ THE FOLLOWING FROM http://www.chompchomp.com/terms/pronounreference.htm
A possessive noun should not be the antecedent for a pronoun.
Possessive nouns function as adjectives. You can drive a fast car, a red car, a dirty car, or Mom's car. Fast, red, and dirty are all adjectives telling us which car. The possessive noun Mom's is adjectival too.
You ruin the clarity of a sentence when the antecedent for a subject or object pronoun like he or him is a possessive noun.
Read this example:
Kevin's fingers were strumming the guitar when he winked at Donna.
When we read this sentence, we assume that Kevin is the he winking at Donna. But remember that Kevin's is adjectival, not a noun. If we replaced Kevin's with agile, quick, or long, we wouldn't consider any of those adjectives the antecedent for he, so we shouldn't consider Kevin's either. And the fingers certainly aren't doing the winking as they have no eyes!
Furthermore, a reader might wonder if the whole Kevin is strumming the guitar or if just his disembodied fingers are making the music. The sentence in its current version is unclear.
To fix the problem, you can replace the pronoun with a specific noun. You can't have a pronoun reference error if you have no pronoun!
Kevin's fingers were strumming the guitar when this young man winked at Donna.
Or you can revise the sentence so that the pronoun refers to a real noun—that is, a real antecedent:
As Kevin strummed the guitar, he winked at Donna.
