Grammar Question

Factual Questions
1

Hi,

Hope this is the right forum. I am looking for a factual, citable answer.

A friend and I are having a debate on a sentence. A bit of background. The sentence in question is a line from a character in my friend’s screenplay. The character is an indigent college student, and is referring to herself and other poor students in the line in question.

My friend wrote the line thus (well, she did not bold any words, the bolding in both examples is just to show you what word we disagree on):

Some of us don’t have parents paying for their tuition.

I truly believe my friend is wrong and that the sentence should read:

Some of us don’t have parents paying for our tuition.

Who is right? I will need a grammar cite, please, to convince my friend.

Thanks in advance.

Sir Rhosis

2

Technically you are correct Sir R the antecedent and trailing pronoun should agree, but since this is a play, the character’s grammar would not be perfect and error should stand because unless the character is really picky her usage is the more natural.

3

This isn’t a cite, just an analysis. In the sentence, “their” or “our” is referring back to “some of us”. Would you refer to that with “we” or “they”? For example, which is better:

“Some of us are poor. We don’t have much money.”

“Some of us are poor. They don’t have much money.”

I think almost everyone would agree that “we” is better than “they” in that example, and if that’s right, then “our” is better than “their” in your example.

4

Well, actually the antecedent is “some,” so “their” is correct. Drop the “of us” and see.

If you drop the “Some of” and change “us” to “we” (to make it a subject pronoun), then “our” is correct. The fact that you need to change “us” when you recast the sentence in this way is further proof it’s not the antecedent, since in this case the antecedant would be the subject of the sentence.

But you could use either in informal speech.

5

Not to speak for my friend (I will send her the thread after a few responses), but I gather that she believes the phrase “of us” should be ignored totally in determining whether to use “their” or “our.” My feelings are that you can’t just drop or ignore that prep phrase.

Sir Rhosis

EDIT: Chuck beat me to it.

6

Try:

“Some of you have lost your way.”

“Some of you have lost their way.”

Are you suggesting that “their” would be better than “your” in that example?

7

A linguistic source.

Both variations in the OP sound fine to my ears. I would probably lean towards the “their” construction. And, as has been noted, if this is dialog in a play, it really doesn’t matter. Both are common enough constructions and sound natural.

8

This is all just IMO, but I think the negative in the OP makes a subtle difference.

If someone were to say:

a) Some of us have parents paying for their tuition; or
b) Some of us have parents paying for our tuition

I’d say (b) sounds more natural.

However, the OP was:

a) Some of us don’t have parents paying for their tution; or
b) Some of us don’t have parents paying for our tuition

Then (a) sounds more natural.

And I think it’s because of who gets their tuition paid for. In the first example, the speaker is a member of a group of people that has parents paying tuition, so (b) makes sense. But in the second example, the speaker is not a member of this group – the group of people who have parents paying tuition is a set apart from the speaker, so (a) sounds more natural.

Again, this is not based on any rules of grammar, but that’s the way I’d speak if my parents were paying for my tuition (or not).