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First thing first, the title isn't a typo and I intentionally wrote it like that. This question came to mind while I was reading someone's post in another forum and it's about the possibility of the sentence, in other words, I want to know whether this sentence below is possible grammatically.

A) She is running with the ball in his glove.

Additional info you could skip to read:

The actual sentence is (according to people in my forum and the app) this one below.

The athlete's (a male athlete) running with the ball in his glove.

It's a sentence taken from a Spanish learning app and the user i.e. someone who posted this claimed that this sentence should be correct:

La atleta corre con la pelota en su guante.

His sentence was marked incorrect by the app and the app suggested this answer instead:

El atleta corre con la pelota en su guante.

Exactly as you could predict that it's a matter of balancing the gender in a sentence.

The user also added this comment below.

B) However, shouldn't it be still correct? Imagine a woman wearing a man's glove?

It's my turn to pose a question. In writings, could we write the sentence A) or should we avoid that?

If we should avoid writing that way, what is your suggestion regarding the event that the user intended to convey as in B) in order to enlighten the readers clearly?

3 Answers 3

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Yes, sentence A is possible grammatically, but it might or might not make sense depending on context.

In English, a presonal pronoun should (with some exceptions, which wouldn't apply here) have a referent. The referent doesn't have to be explicit, but the reader should know who or what is meant. Without any context, sentence A would probably confuse the reader. ("His" obviously doesn't refer to "she", so whom does it refer to?) However, it would be fine if the previous sentence provided proper context. For example:

Alice is running with a ball when she notices Bob's glove lying on the ground and picks it up. Now she is running with the ball in his glove.

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The sentence "She ran with the ball in his glove" would make sense if the 'she' in question was not actually wearing the glove but instead running while just carrying it (with a ball cradled in it at the same time). If she is actually wearing the glove I would say ownership of the glove doesn't matter because the person wearing it has great enough possession that 'her glove' would be the only construction to make sense in that situation, even if she's going to return the glove to someone else after the game.

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  • It suggests to me that the ball is inside the glove (where a hand would normally go).
    – Peter
    Sep 13, 2022 at 6:27
  • @Peter As an American, my natural reading of the sentence is that we're talking about a baseball glove!
    – stangdon
    Sep 13, 2022 at 11:25
  • Not being American, I associate gloves with warmth rather than other types of protection. Of course there are also wicketkeepers’ gloves, batsmen’s gloves, and even goalkeepers’ gloves that have primary purposes other than warmth, but they were not my first thought.
    – Peter
    Sep 13, 2022 at 14:31
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It could also be construed as meaning that she is running, even though the ball is in his glove (for example, she is still running toward the plate as though she has a chance to score, even though he is already standing on the plate with the ball in his glove, meaning that she is "out".)

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