Posted by Nash Biani

ABSOLUTE BEGINNER COURSE

SPOKEN ENGLISH

Lesson 7

(Page 1)

English Grammar: Object Pronouns

me-us-you-you all-they-him-her-it

Section I

Grammar

Page 1

THE USE OF OBJECT PRONOUNS IN SPOKEN ENGLISH

We have looked at pronouns earlier too. We looked at I-we-you-he-she and then we also saw how to use it-they. In another lesson we studied possessives such as my-our-your etc. In this lesson we will learn how to use object pronouns when we speak English. In coming lessons we will look at other things such as days of the week and months of the year.

ENGLISH AAM SPOKEN ENGLISH GRAMMAR BOOK.

Read, understand and copy the following in your grammar book.

What are object pronouns and how do they help us in speaking English?

Broadly speaking, object pronouns are pronouns which receive the action when we speak English. What this means is:

Subject pronouns like I, we, you, you all, they, she, he and it, do or perform the action that is being spoken about.

Robert drove the car.

He drove the car.

Robert did the driving. So, when we use the pronoun ‘he’ in the place of Robert, ‘he’ is called a subject pronoun in English grammar.

Object pronouns are pronouns on which the action is performed or which receive the action.

Robert drove the car.

Robert drove it.

The car was driven by Robert. Robert did or performed the action of driving on the car. The car itself did not do the action, which is driving, spoken about in the sentence. That is why the pronoun ‘it’ in this sentence is called an object pronoun.

Let us look at another example:

Mohan gave Seema a rose.

He gave her a rose.

He gave a rose to her.

In this sentence, Mohan gave the rose to Seema or we could say, performed the action of giving. So, when we replace Mohan with ‘he’, the pronoun ‘he’ is a subject pronoun.

Seema received the rose. In a way, we could say, the action of giving the rose was performed on her or she received the effect of the verb ‘gave’. So, when we use ‘her’ in place of Seema, the pronoun ‘her’ is called an object pronoun.

Strictly speaking, 'Seema' and 'her' in the sentences above are indirect objects. But as we have decided, we don't want to get involved in these finer points, at least not now. What we need to know is that here, it should be 'her' and not 'she' that replaces 'Seema'. The difference between direct and indirect objects will be discussed in some lecture later.