Chapter 3 audio · Language Landscapes
The epigraph, complete pronoun and determinative tables, and references accompanying the narration.
the domestic labour
that purchased
the silence
that wrote every poem
that you've ever read
Abby Paige, “Selected Hoems”, in Best Canadian Poetry 2020, pp. 43–44.
The nine subject-exercise quotations retain the chapter’s attributions to Michael Chabon, Sara Nović, Marilynne Robinson, J. M. Ledger, Paul Harding, Edward P. Jones, Tobias Wolff, Denis Johnson, and Richard Beard. The chapter does not supply work titles or page numbers for those quotations; none have been added.
The complete tables from Chapter 3 are reproduced below. “Ind Gen” and “Dep Gen” mean independent and dependent genitive.
| Type | Number | Gender | Nominative | Accusative | Reflexive | Ind Gen | Dep Gen |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st-per | Singular | Personal | I | me | myself | mine | my |
| 1st-per | Plural | Personal | we | us | ourselves | ours | our |
| 2nd-per | Singular | Personal | you | you | yourself | yours | your |
| 2nd-per | Plural | Personal | you | you | yourselves | yours | your |
| 3rd-per | Singular | Masculine | he | him | himself | his | his |
| 3rd-per | Singular | Feminine | she | her | herself | hers | her |
| 3rd-per | Singular | Impersonal | it | it | itself | its | |
| 3rd-per | Singular | Personal | they | them | themselves | theirs | their |
| 3rd-per | Plural | Universal | they | them | themselves | theirs | their |
| 3rd-per generic | Singular | Personal | one | one | oneself | one's | |
| Interrogative | Singular | Personal | who | whom | whose | whose | |
| Relative | Flexible | Personal | who | whom | whose | ||
| Reciprocal | Singular | Universal | each other | each other's | each other's | ||
| Reciprocal | Singular | Universal | one another | one another's | one another's | ||
| Dummy | Singular | Impersonal | it | ||||
| Dummy | Flexible | None | there |
| Determinative | Type | Number | Gender | Definiteness |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| a/an | Article | Singular | Indefinite | |
| the | Article | Flexible | Definite | |
| this | Demonstrative | Singular | Impersonal | Definite |
| these | Demonstrative | Plural | Impersonal | Definite |
| that | Demonstrative | Singular | Impersonal | Definite |
| those | Demonstrative | Plural | Impersonal | Definite |
| each | Distributive | Singular | Definite | |
| every | Distributive | Singular | Definite | |
| any | Existential | Flexible | Indefinite | |
| some | Distributive | Flexible | Indefinite | |
| either | Disjunctive | Singular | Indefinite | |
| neither | Disjunctive | Singular | Indefinite | |
| no (none) | negative | Flexible | Definite | |
| few/fewer/fewest | Paucal | Plural | Impersonal | Indefinite |
| a little | Paucal | Singular | Impersonal | Indefinite |
| what | Interrogative | Flexible | Impersonal | |
| which | Interrogative | Flexible | ||
| what | Relative | Flexible | Impersonal | Definite |
| which | Relative | Flexible | Impersonal | Definite |
| one | Numeral | Singular | Indefinite | |
| two | Numeral | Plural | Indefinite |
The source’s gender qualification applies only when a determinative is used without a head noun: What person is this?, but not What is this? for a person. Demonstratives are not always impersonal: This is my friend. and Those who try win.