Reflexive & Reciprocal Pronouns
Reflexive Pronouns
When we want to refer back to the subject of the sentence (or subject of a clause) we use a reflexive pronoun. Reflexive pronouns end in either ‘self’ in the singular, or ‘selves’ in the plural.
As you can see in the chart below, there are eight reflexive pronouns:
As you can see in the chart below, there are eight reflexive pronouns:
Reflexive Pronoun | |
Singular | myself yourself himself, herself, itself |
Plural | ourselves yourselves themselves |
The chart below is there to provide you with examples of sentences with and without reflexive pronouns:
Reflexive Pronouns | |
the underlined words are NOT the same person/thing | the underlined words are the SAME person/thing |
Jane saw Ashley today. | Jane saw herself reflected in the water. |
Why don’t you write about it? | Why don’t you write about yourself? |
I sent him a letter. | He sent himself a letter. |
He wrote her a poem. | She wrote herself a poem. |
The fish swims with Jane. | My fish swims by itself. |
You like John? | We promote ourselves. |
Can you find my dog? | Can you kids look after yourselves? |
They blame you. | They blame themselves. |
Reciprocal Pronouns
When two or more subjects act in the same way towards each other, we call them reciprocal pronouns.
Example:
If Jane is talking to John, and John is talking to Jane, we say “Jane and John are talking to each other.”
The action of talking is being “reciprocated” or being given or done in return. Believe it or not, there are only two options when it comes to reciprocal pronouns, and they are both two words long. Here are some examples:
“Jane and John are talking to each other.” or “Jane and John are talking to one another.”
When do we use Reciprocal Pronouns?
Well, first, there must be at least two nouns (persons, things) involved. This means that reciprocal pronouns cannot be used with singular pronouns, like “he”, “she”, or “it”. Secondly, the two nouns must be doing the same thing.
To help you prepare, here are a few examples:
- Jane and John play games with each other.
- Nicholas and Jane walk to class with one another.
- My brothers kept hitting one another.
- The cars ran into each other.
- We gave each other a high five!
- Why can’t you love one another?
- We are not allowed to see each other.
- You and I studied language arts with each other.
Have you noticed one being used more often than the other? That’s right, each other is used a lot more frequently than one another. This is because each other usually sounds more formal.
There is a debate about using one another only when there are three or more people or things, but there is no formal rule to this.
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