Week 3 - Agreement with Antecedents

This week we're going to talk about agreement between words and their antecedents. The rule that always applies in these situations is that if a word has an antecedent, a word that it refers back to, the word and its antecedent have to agree in gender, number, and case. We don't need to look at each of these three types of agreement, but here are a few examples that crop up frequently.

A common type of number disagreement shows up when the antecedent is of indeterminate gender, and the writer tries to cover his or her bases by using "they" or "them" to refer back to that antecedent:

When we talk to a postdoc about coming here, we like to go over their benefits package so there won't be any surprises.

The disagreement in this case is between the singular antecedent ("a postdoc") and the plural pronoun "their" later on in the sentence. The correct sentence would be:

When we talk to a postdoc about coming here, we like to go over his or her benefits package so there won't be any surprises.


Disagreements in case show up most often in sentences in which the verb equates the subject with the object in a sentence or clause. Examples often involve forms of the verb "to be:"

The speaker was me.

In this sentence, the verb ("was") is equating the subject "The speaker" with the object "me," but that equation demands that the object agree with the subject in case. Even though it sounds odd and overly formal to most of us nowadays, the correct sentence would have to use the nominative, or declarative, form of the personal pronoun:

The speaker was I.

Of course, if a formally correct sentence like "The speaker was I" sounds too stiff, you can always turn it around and say "I was the speaker" -- it's not cheating!


This next example isn't a gender/number/case problem, but rather a confusion between people and things. It's become common nowadays, especially in spoken English, to use "that" instead of "who" when the antecedent is a person. "That" should be used only for antecedents that are things, and "who" should be used for antecedents who are people:

I like paintings that are bright and colorful, but I prefer people who are non-controversial.


Another common problem is the use of "It" or "This" at the beginning of a sentence when there are multiple possible antecedents. Here's an example:

Research administrators perform tasks as diverse as writing grant proposals, making appointments, and analyzing financial reports. This makes it difficult for HR staff to grade positions and track personnel development. It also makes it hard for the administrator to define his or her role clearly.

The "This" at the beginning of the second sentence and the "It" at the beginning of the third both have indefinite antecedents, i.e. there are nouns ("writing," "making," and "analyzing") in the first sentence and phrases ("to grade positions" and "[to] track personnel development") in the second between them and their actual antecedents that confuse the situation. Admittedly, the reader can usually figure out the correct antecedents, but he or she shouldn't have to do that. A better paragraph would be:

Research administrators perform tasks as diverse as writing grant proposals, making appointments, and analyzing financial reports. Because of this variety, HR staff have difficulty grading positions and tracking personnel development, and the administrators themselves have trouble defining their roles clearly.


Finally (and this is more of a Week 1 example than a Week 3 example), here's one that lots of people have questions about: do you use "whoever" or "whomever" when it's not only the object of a preposition but also an element in a prepositional clause? Here's an example:

I'll give the door prize to whoever is first in line.

Some people might argue that you should use "whomever," the objective case, rather than "whoever," since it's the object of the preposition "to" (we talked about objects of prepositions in Week 1). The usage above is correct, though, since "whoever" is the subject of its clause. If it were the object of its clause, "whomever" would be correct, as in

I'll give the door prize to whomever the fans prefer.