Questions concerning pronouns.

[Guest]

Hello,

Lurking guest with some questions on the behalf of my girlfriend.

1. If the same pronoun, for example "they", occurs more than once in a sentence, do all occurrences have to refer to the same noun? If not, would it be possible to get an example of such a sentence?

2. I have been told that every time I encounter a pronoun, I should search backwards until I find a matching noun (gender and number). That noun is supposed to be the referent to the pronoun. Is this always true? Can this method always be used to spot an ambiguous pronoun for sentence correction?

Thanks.

[Guest]

Hello again,

I have some follow up questions.

1. If the same pronoun, for example "they", occurs more than once in a sentence, do all occurrences have to refer to the same noun? If not, would it be possible to get an example of such a sentence?

If this is true, does this rule also applies to a case with different pronouns like "they" and "their" but that still match the same kind of noun?

2. I have been told that every time I encounter a pronoun, I should search backwards until I find a matching noun (gender and number). That noun is supposed to be the referent to the pronoun. Is this always true? Can this method always be used to spot an ambiguous pronoun for sentence correction?

A pronoun can refer to the subject, but can it also refer to the object?

If two sentences are divided by a semicolon, what are the rules for pronouns? Do the pronouns on each side of the semicolon need to be consistent with each other? For example in this question:

Japanese researchers are producing a series of robots that can identify human facial expressions, to which they will then respond; their goal is primarily creating a robot that will empathize with us.

(A) expressions, to which they will then respond; their goal is primarily creating
(B) expressions, then responding to them; primarily to create
(C) expressions and then respond to them; the researchers' primary goal is to create
(D) expressions as well as giving a response to them; their primary goal is creation of
(E) expressions and responding to them; primarily, the researchers' goal is creating

Thanks in advance.

[Guest]

I have been told that my questions are posted in the wrong forum session. Can a moderator please move my questions to a more suitable location? Sorry for the inconvenience.

[StaceyKoprince]

hey - you can post general verbal questions in the General Questions forum and most of your questions are general. You did, however, post a problem without sourcing that problem. We cannot answer the post (or move it to the right forum) unless we know what the source is.