1. Use of they/them/theirwith neither/either, someone/everyone/no one etc.

These expressionsaresingularandtakeasingular verb.Theirpersonal pronounsthereforeshouldbehe/she and thepossessiveadjectivesshouldbehis/her (he/his formalesandmixedsexes; she/her forfemales).Butmany nativespeakers findthistroublesomeandoftenuse they/their, even when only one sexisinvolved:

Neither of them remembered their instructions. Would someone lend me their binoculars?

Everyone has read the notice, haven't they?

No one objected, did they? (See also 51 C.)

70 Reflexivepronouns

15. A These are: myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves,

yourselves, themselves. Note the difference between the second person singular yourself, and the second person plural yourselves. The indefinite reflexive/emphasizing pronoun is oneself.

В myself, yourself etc. are used as objects of a verb when theactionoftheverbreturnsto thedoer,i.e.when subject and object arethesameperson:

/ cut myself. He can't shave himself.

It is not always easy to amuse oneself on holiday. Tom and Ann blamed themselves for the accident. This refrigerator defrosts itself.

Note the change of meaningif we replace the reflexive pronoun by the reciprocal pronouneach other:

Tom and Ann blamed each other. (Tom blamed Ann and Ann blamed Tom. See 53 C.)

С myself,yourself etc. areusedsimilarly aftera verb +preposition:

He spoke to himself. Did she pay for herself? Look after yourself. Take care of yourselves.

I'm annoyed with myself. He sat by himself, (alone)

She addressed the envelope to herself.

But if the preposition indicates locality, we use the ordinary, not the reflexive, pronouns:

Did you take your dog with you? They put the child between them.

Had he/Did he have any money on him?

71 myself, himself, herself etc. used as emphasizing pronouns

myself etc.canalsobe usedto emphasizea noun or pronoun:

The King himself gave her the medal. self is then stressed in speech.

When used in this way the pronoun is never essential andcan beomittedwithout changingthe sense. It usually emphasizesthe subject of the sentence and is placed after it:

Ann herself opened the door. Tom himself went. Alternatively it can be placed after the object if there is one:

Ann opened the door herself or after an intransitive verb:

Tom went himself.

If the intransitive verb is followed by a preposition + noun, theemphasizingpronoun can be placed after this noun:

Tom went to London himself or Tom himself went to London. When it emphasizes another noun it is placed immediately after it:

/ saw Tom himself. I spoke to the President himself.

She liked the diamond itself but not the setting. Note the difference between:

/ did it myself (It was done by me and not by someone else) and

/ did it by myself (I did it without help).

Relative pronouns and clauses

There are threekindsofrelativeclauses: defining(see 72-7),non-defining(78-81) andconnective(82).

72. Defining relative clauses

These describe the preceding noun in such a way as to distinguish it from other nouns of thesameclass. A clauseofthiskindisessential to theclearunderstandingofthenoun. Inthesentence:

The man who told me this refused to give me his name 'who told me this' is the relative clause. If we omit this, it is not clear what man we are talking about. Notice that there is no comma between a noun and a defining relative clause.

Definingrelativeclausesusually followthe+ noun, but they canalsobe usedwith a/an+ noun,pluralnouns without theandthepronouns all, none, anybody, somebody etc. and those. Clausesfollowinga/an+ noun, pluralnounswithoutthe andsomebody/someone/something sometimesdefinetheirnoun/pronounonly indirectly. The noun/pronoun in these cases isusuallythe object of a verb or preposition:

/ met someone who said he knew you.

The book is about a girl who falls in love with . . . Sometimes these clauses are separated from their noun/pronoun by a word or phrase:

There's a man here who wants . . .

I saw something in the paper which would interest you. But normally relative clauses should be placed directly after their noun or pronoun:

The noise that he made woke everybody up. She was annoyed by something that I had said.