Chapter 6 — Pronouns and reference

The essentials in four points:

• A pronoun agrees with its antecedent: every student → his or her (not their in the English tested by the ITP).
• Who (subject, person), whom (object), whose (possession), which (thing) — never which for a person.
• Collective nouns (committee, team) are referred to with its when treated as singular.

A pronoun only means something through its antecedent: the ITP checks that the two match in number, gender and function — and that the relative pronoun chosen fits its antecedent.

1. Pronoun–antecedent agreement. In the standardised English of the test, every student, each, neither, anyone are singular and are picked up by his or her, not their. Collective nouns (committee, team, government) treated as singular take its.
✔ Every student must bring his or her calculator.
✔ The committee announced its decision.

2. Choosing the right relative. Person → who (subject) / whom (object); thing → which/that; possession → whose; no antecedent → whoever/whatever (the pronoun plays a role inside the clause: subject → whoever, object → whomever).
✔ The novelist who wrote this trilogy… · ✔ Marie Curie, whose discoveries…

3. Pairs not to confuse. its (possessive) / it’s (= it is); whose / who’s (= who is); each other (two) / one another (more than two) — never “each another”.