MASTERING THE USAGE OF THE INDEFINITE PRONOUNS

Grappling with the Grammar of the Indefinite Pronouns
By Jose A. Carillo

I can’t help but wince—sometimes even groan audibly—when an impressive speaker ruins a perfectly fluent speech in English with a hesitant, obviously uncomfortable delivery of a sentence like “Everybody must give his share to this noble undertaking.” Such stumbles show a less than full grasp of the grammar of the indefinite pronouns, which as we are taught early in English should always agree with the number of their antecedent nouns as well as with their gender.

This subject-verb disagreement problem frequently arises when an indefinite pronoun is used as doer or receiver of the action in a sentence with no specific antecedent noun. It’s easy to figure out if an indefinite pronoun is singular or plural, of course, but there’s often no way of knowing beforehand what gender to use for its possessive form. Consider the indefinite pronouns “all” and “somebody” in this sentence, for instance: “All of us [is, are] agreed that this mission must be accomplished, but somebody who has [his, her] personal interests foremost in [his, her] mind must inhibit [himself, herself] from joining it.”

That the verb “are” for the pronoun “all” is clear, of course, but whether to use “his” or “her” as the possessive of the pronoun “somebody,” and whether to use “himself” or “herself” as its reflexive pronoun, are very thorny choices indeed! This ambiguity has given rise to certain conventions—some self-evident and some rather arbitrary—to make sure that the grammar of the indefinite pronouns remains beyond reproach.

Before discussing these conventions, though, we need to review the indefinite pronouns to be doubly sure which are notionally singular, plural, or which can be either singular or plural depending on how they are used.

The definitely singular indefinite pronouns: “another,” “anybody,” “anyone,” “anything,” “each,” “either,” “everybody,” “everyone,” “everything,” “little,” “much,” “neither,” “nobody,” “no one,” “nothing,” “one,” “other,” “somebody,” “someone,” and “something.” Except for three, they take singular possessive pronouns and singular reflexive pronouns; the only problem is that their gender is indeterminate. (The exceptions are “little,” “much,” and “other,” which can be used in more limited ways: “Little is done by people who only talk.” “Much is accomplished through hard work.” “Other than him, who is to blame?”)

The definitely plural indefinite pronouns: “both,” “few,” “many,” “others,” and “several.” All five are no-brainers as to their number: they are plural through and through. Each can take the plural possessive pronoun “their” and the reflexive “themselves,” and we don’t even have to think about gender at all when using them.

The indefinite pronouns that are either singular or plural: “all,” “any,” “more,” “most,” “none,” and “some.” They are singular or plural depending on what they refer to. Singular: “All of that book is pure, unmitigated thrash.” Plural: “The singers are at the studio; all are rehearsing their songs.”

We still have the recurrent dilemma of what gender to use for the singular indefinite possessives. The default usage, of course, is the possessive pronoun “his” when no information is available about the antecedent noun’s gender: “Everybody must give his share to this noble undertaking.” Only in one instance, when the statement refers to a known all-female group, is this default ignored: “Everybody in this women’s league must give her share to this noble undertaking.”

Users of the indefinite possessive have come up with two more options to avoid the male bias in using “him” as default. The first option is to use “his or her,” as in “Everybody must give his or her share to this undertaking.” However, this becomes very awkward with repeated use, so that many writers and speakers take the much better option of reconstructing the entire sentence, using a plural antecedent indefinite pronoun instead to do away with the need to establish gender: “All must give their share to this noble undertaking.”

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This essay first appeared in my weekly column “English Plain and Simple” in the Education Section of the March 9, 2017 issue (print edition only) of The Manila Times, © 2017 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

DEALING WITH THE ENGLISH COMPARATIVES BETTER

Avoid stumbling when using the English comparatives

Who hasn’t stumbled grammatically when comparing things in English, like saying “Less professors than expected have applied to teach in that college of law” or “The public is now showing fewer tolerance for the arrogance of that public official”? Usually, the speaker becomes conscious of the embarrassing error only a few seconds later, but the damage to his or her self-esteem is irreparable. For there’s really no way to justify why those simple comparatives weren’t said correctly off the cuff, the first as “Fewer professors than expected have applied to teach in that college of law,” and the second as “The public is now showing less tolerance for the arrogance of that public official.”

Sizing up and comparing things is one of humankind’s strongest instincts, so it’s really no surprise that every language evolves a well-defined grammar for comparatives. As we all should know by now, English does this in either of two ways:
 

(a) by adding the suffix “-er” to the positive form of an adjective (or adverb), as in “deeper” for “deep,” or

(b) by putting the modifiers “more” or “less” ahead of a polysyllabic adjective derived from a foreign language, as in “more expensive” and “less appetizing.”

To complete the comparative form, English places the subordinating conjunction “than” between the two elements being compared: “The condominium units here are more expensive than those situated in the commercial district.” “This restaurant’s cooking is more (less) appetizing than that of the restaurant in front.” In these comparative constructions, the first element is a clause that expresses the difference (as in “the condominium units here are more expensive”), and the second element is introduced by the subordinating conjunction “than” (“than those situated in the commercial district”).

Always keep in mind though that in two-clause sentences, the following two-part subordinating conjunctions are used instead of “than”:

(a) “as/not as…as,” as in “Our Davao apartelles are as (not as) big as our Tagaytay apartelles”; 

(b) “not so/not as…as,” as in “Her second starring role is not so (not as) sensual as her first”; 

(c) “the same…as,” as in “The weight of his luggage was the same as that in his previous flight”; and (d) “less/more…than,” as in “Their wedding reception cost more (less) than they anticipated.”

Most English speakers quickly get adept at using these comparative forms, but as stated in the outset, the choice between using the comparatives “fewer” and “less” does presents some conceptual difficulty. It requires clearly knowing beforehand whether the noun to be modified by them is countable or noncountable.

Something is countable, of course, when we can figure out without difficulty how many of it there are; we then use “number” as an indefinite measure for it, as in “the number of houses” and the “a number of guests.” On the other hand, something is noncountable if it’s in bulk form and counting its constituent units would be insufferably difficult or impossible; we then use “amount” as a measure for it, as in “the amount of water” and “a great amount of exertion.”

For plural count nouns, or things that use “number” as measure, the comparative “fewer” is used, as in “There are fewer viewers of her provocative blogs now than last week.” However, for singular mass nouns or things that use “amount” as measure,  the comparative “less” is used, as in “Our truck fleet consumed less diesel fuel this week than last week.” We should also take note that when a plural count noun is thought of as an aggregate, “amount” is more appropriate than “number” as a measure for it, as in “You can ship to us any amount of Hawaiian pineapples you can produce.”

With this, we should be better off from now on in avoiding stumbles when using the English comparatives

This essay first appeared in my weekly column “English Plain and Simple” in the Education Section of  the March 16, 2017 issue (print edition only) of The Manila Times, © 2017 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.