Karl J Sherlock
Associate Professor, English
Email: karl.sherlock@gcccd.edu
Phone: 619-644-7871
The word "demonstrative" comes from the verb "demonstrate." A demonstrative person demonstrates his feelings openly, even conspicuously. A pronoun that holds up something or someone as an example is a demonstrative pronoun. The simplest way to imagine a demonstrative pronoun is that it is being pointed at, or pointed out. Note that the demonstrative pronouns decline in slightly different ways than other pronouns: in number and in proximity, instead of number and person.
In the same way indefinite quantifiers become indefinite pronouns, a demonstrative pronoun is born when a demonstrative adjective stands in for its own antecedent noun. (The same is true of interrogative pronouns.) In the following examples, some uses of the words above are demonstrative pronouns while others are determiner adjectives modifying nouns. The corresponding diagrams make the distinction very clear: pronouns go on horizontal lines, while adjectives show up diagonally under nouns.
Reflexive pronouns are never, ever the subject of a clause! You would never write, for example, "My best friend and myself went fishing." They are strictly used after verbs ("I doubt myself"), verbals ("to love oneself"), and prepositions ("by themselves").
Pronouns that in every way are identical to the reflexive pronouns, but which emphasize and rename more like an appositive, are called intensive pronouns.
Ordinarily they are set apart by commas, just like appositives, and their chief purpose is to create a rhetorical effect. It should come as no surprise, then, that in a sentence diagram they are placed in parentheses alongside the nouns they intensify—just like appositives. Remember, though, that some words ending in "-self" are reflexive, object pronouns that deserve their own placement.
Karl J Sherlock
Associate Professor, English
Email: karl.sherlock@gcccd.edu
Phone: 619-644-7871
8800 Grossmont College Drive
El Cajon, California 92020
619-644-7000
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