Pronouns

“a student of mine’s mother”

Apostrophes, Possessives, Pronouns

I heard this the other day, and it struck me as odd — mostly because there is a bad habit among many American children to say “mines” instead of “mine”.

Problem:
A pronoun may not be converted into a possessive simply by adding apostrophe-“s”.

Explanation:
The archaic use of the word “mine” as a pronoun is as a substitute for “my” — as in “Mine eyes have seen the glory …”.

But the word “mine” as a pronoun has two modern meanings:

  1. a predicate-adjective form of the possessive case of the pronoun “I”, as in “The green car is mine.”;
  2. something belonging to me, as in “Mine is the purple towel.”

I am unsure whether the “mine” in “a student of mine’s mother” more closely follows definition #1 or definition #2.

Concentrating on the first part of the phrase, one could argue that the “mine” in “a student of mine” follows definition #1 because one could say, “The student is mine.”

Or one could argue that the “mine” in “a student of mine” follows definition #2 because one could say, “Mine is the student.”

No matter which argument makes more sense to you, it is clear that “mine” in “a student of mine’s mother” is a pronoun.

And a pronoun may not be converted into a possessive simply by adding apostrophe-“s”, so the phrase must be rewritten.

Solution:
“the mother of one of my students”
OR
“one of my students’ mothers”

“Please send it to Joe and myself.”

Common English Blunders, Pronouns

Reader Rick Mallonee submitted this one to me a few days ago.

Problem:
“Myself” is the wrong pronoun.

Explanation:
Rick wrote to me four days ago (Thanks, Rick!) that he heard the statement “Please send it to Joe and myself.” in a meeting.

This sentence is an imperative.

The speaker is imploring the listener to send something to Joe and to him.

This sentence can not be reflexive because the speaker is not talking about something that he is doing for/by himself.

“Myself” is a reflexive pronoun, so it is not the correct first-person-singular pronoun here in this non-reflexive sentence.

Instead, “me” is the correct pronoun.

To confirm this, imagine the speaker asking the listener to send something only to him: “Please send it to me.”

Adding “Joe and ” has no effect on the pronoun; “me” remains the correct pronoun.

Solution:
“Please send it to Joe and me.”

“The tool it’s self seems …”

Misspellings, Possessives, Pronouns

My wife saw this on Amazon.com.

Problem:
The reflexive pronoun is triply misspelled.

Explanation:
My wife was researching a carpentry tool on Amazon.com.

She was reading comments from those who had bought the tool when she came across “The tool it’s self seems …”.

The obvious solution is to replace I-T-APOSTROPHE-S-SPACE-S-E-L-F with the reflexive pronoun “itself” — spelled I-T-S-E-L-F.

What fascinates me is how the commenter managed to make three spelling mistakes in the process of misspelling this pronoun.

  1. Mistake #1 was to assume that reflexive pronouns are always formed by combining a possessive pronoun with the word “self”.
  2. Mistake #2 was to assume that a space should appear between such a possessive pronoun and the word “self”.
  3. Mistake #3 was to misspell the possessive pronoun “its” as I-T-APOSTROPHE-S.

Let us discuss these three mistakes in reverse order.

If we undo mistake #3, then we get “its self” — spelled I-T-S-SPACE-S-E-L-F.

If we undo mistake #2, then we get “itsself” — spelled I-T-S-S-E-L-F.

If we undo mistake #1, then we get “itself” — spelled I-T-S-E-L-F.

Solution:
“The tool itself seems …”