Pronouns

“I’m worried about him singing with the choir.”

Possessives, Pronouns, Versus

I heard this on a BET television program.

Problem:
Many wonder whether “him” or “his” is correct in sentences such as this one.

Explanation:
The present participial phrase “singing with the choir” acts as an adjective to modify “him” in “I’m worried about him singing with the choir.” To prove this, we can remove the participial phrase and retain the sense of the sentence: “I’m worried about him.”

In contrast, if we replace “him” with “his” in the sentence, then “singing with the choir” may not be removed. That is, “I’m worried about his.” makes no sense; the possessive pronoun “his” requires the gerund phrase “singing with the choir” or another object.

Summarizing,

  • “him” makes “singing with the choir” act as a present participial phrase;
  • “his” makes “singing with the choir” act as a gerund phrase.

In other words, “him” and “his” are equally correct but have different effects.

Putting this summary in non-grammatical terms, we get the solution.

Solution:
Use “him” when you want to focus the attention on the person. Use “his” when you want to focus the attention on the action performed by the person.

“Each of us has our own style.”

Possessives, Pronouns

I heard someone say this recently.

Problem:
The number of the possessive pronoun does not match the number of the subject.

Explanation:
“Each of us” is singular (the speaker is considering “us” one at a time), so the possessive pronoun in front of “own style” should be singular.

The possessive pronoun “our” is plural and therefore does not match the number of the subject (“Each of us”).

I believe that the speaker of the statement, in ignoring the number of “Each of us” (singular) in favor of the number of “us” (plural), was distracted by the fact that “us” and “our” usually go together (are both first-person plural pronouns) and the proximity of “us” to the possessive pronoun in the statement.

“Each of us has their own style.” would be incorrect, too, because “their” is plural and also is inconsistent with the singularity of “Each of us” (the subject of the sentence).

Given that the statement refers to a group of people, the correct possessive pronouns would be the singular ones “his” and/or “her”. The mental impediment of combining “us” with “his” or “her” in a statement seems to be that “us” is in the first person whereas “his” and “her” are in the third person. One must appreciate that “Each of” in front of “us” forces the listener to consider the third-person individuals in the group.

Solutions:
“Each of us has his own style.” — for an all-male group
“Each of us has her own style.” — for an all-female group
“Each of us has his or her own style.” — for a mixed group

“Ourself”

Common English Blunders, Pronouns

I heard this on National Public Radio.

Problem:
The pronoun “ourself” is nonstandard.

Explanation:
The pronoun “ourself” has only a couple of entries in most dictionaries. The first entry typically says used as a reflexive pronoun in royal proclamations. The second entry typically says that “ourself” is nonstandard.

In other words, “ourself” in most situations is an incorrect replacement for the reflexive pronoun “ourselves”. The word “ourself” is incorrect because “our” is plural and takes the plural “selves” (instead of the singular “self”).

I suspect that the increasing use of “ourself” outside of royal proclamations is due to increasing misuse of the reflexive pronouns “himself”, “herself” and “yourself” in non-reflexive situations. For example, many people have become accustomed to saying “yourself” when the correct pronoun is “you” instead.

Solution:
“Ourselves”