In this topic, we are going to discuss the changes in first person pronouns and also in their ‘possessive adjectives’, ‘possessive pronouns’ and ’emphatic’ or ‘reflexive pronouns’. Here, we don’t have to concern about the tense form of the reporting verbs.
I. ‘First person’ pronouns in ‘direct speech’ is changed into ‘third person’ pronouns in ‘reported speech’, as follows,
Direct speech ——–> Indirect or Reported speech
First persons ———-> Third persons
I ( subject form) he / she ( sub )
me ( object) him/ her ( object)
my ( possessive Adjective) his / her ( P. Adj.)
mine (possessive pronoun) his / hers ( P. Pron)
myself (reflexive/ emphatic pronoun) himself / herself( R.P / E.P)
We ( Sub.) they ( sub)
us ( object) them ( object)
our (P.Adj.) their ( P.Adj)
ours ( P. Pron) theirs ( P.Pron)
ourselves ( E.P / R.P) themselves ( E.P / R.P)
eg: Martin said to his friend, ” ‘I’ hiked ‘my’ salary ‘myself’ because ‘mine‘ was not enough to satisfy ‘our’ family.”
Martin told his friend that ‘he’ had hiked ‘his’ salary ‘himself’ because ‘his’ had been not enough to satisfy ‘his’ family.
Here, we can see,
First person subject ‘I’ is changed to third person subject ‘he’
First person possessive adjective ‘my’ is changed into third person possessive adjective ‘his’
First person emphatic pronoun ‘myself’ is changed into third person emphatic pronoun ‘himself’
First person possessive pronoun ‘mine’ is changed into third person possessive pronoun ‘his’, at last,
First person possessive adjective ‘my’ is changed into third person possessive adjective ‘his’
Another example,
They said to their Manager, ” Sir, ‘we’ can make ‘our’ company the best with using all the resources. Then the world will recognize us”
They told their Manager that ‘they’ could make ‘their’ company the best with using all the resources and added that then the world would recognize ‘them’
Here also, we can see the similar changes that we have seen in the above example.
- Possessive Adjective : Adjectives showing a possession,
eg: His car.
Here, ‘His’ showing a ‘possession’ and also stands as an ‘adjective’.
Hence, the pronoun ‘His’ is termed as ‘possessive adjective’.
- Possessive pronoun : Pronouns showing a possession.
eg: His car is BMW. But mine is Jaguar.
Here ‘mine’ showing a ‘possession’ and also stands as a ‘pronoun’.
So, ‘mine’ is a ‘Possessive pronoun’.
- Emphatic pronoun : Showing emphasis.
eg: Mr. John ‘himself’ finished all the work.
Here, ‘himself’ is used to emphasize that the work was done by Mr. John, not by anyone else.
So ‘himself’ is an ‘emphatic pronoun’.
- Reflexive pronoun : used to show that the subject and object of a sentence is exactly a same person.
eg: Mary blamed herself for having lost the opportunity.
Here, the subject and object of the sentence is exactly ‘Mary’.
So the reflexive pronoun ‘herself’ is used here.
- ‘Emphatic pronoun’ and ‘Reflexive pronoun’ are ‘same in form’, but ‘different’ in their ‘functions’ as mentioned above.
So, next, we are going to discuss how the second person in direct speech changes.continue reading