it/ them

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Anonymous

#376501 Fri, 08 Jun 07 05:46 AM

hi there,

Fun Club members who are fond of gardening will have a special treat on August 10th, with two special workshop sessions in 9.00 and 11.00. Wonderland Park's gardening team will offer (its / their/ them/ you ) special growing tips.

The model answer says all them are correct, but I don't know why 'its' and 'their' are also correct alternatives.

peter

Anonymous

Clive

#376502 Fri, 08 Jun 07 05:51 AM

Hi Peter,

Fun Club members who are fond of gardening will have a special treat on August 10th, with two special workshop sessions at 9.00 and 11.00. Wonderland Park's gardening team will offer (its / their/ them/ you ) special growing tips.

The model answer says all them are correct, but I don't know why 'its' <<< The writer is thinking of the team as 'a thing' that possesses the tips.

and 'their' <<< The writer is thinking of the team as 'people' that possess the tips.

are also correct alternatives.Best wishes, Clive

Clive

Joined on Thu, Oct 28 2004

Canada

Veteran Member (21,184)

El tango argentino es un pensamiento triste que se puede bailar (The tango argentino is a sad thought which can be danced) Enrique Santos Discépolo

Bokeh

#376574 Fri, 08 Jun 07 10:17 AM

Anonymous wrote:
Wonderland Park's gardening team will offer (its / their/ them/ you ) special growing tips.

First off, you do not need a pronoun at all for this section.

"You¹" and "their²" are obviously wrong.

The antecedent of "them" would be "Fan club members", while "its" emphasises that the "special growing tips" are specific to "Wonderland Park's gardening team" rather than just general wisdom.

¹ No antecedent relates to the second person singular or plural.

2 "Their" is plural while "team" is singular.

Bokeh

Joined on Sun, Mar 18 2007

Spain

Regular Member (506)

Plurals, Nouns, Pronouns

nona the brit

#376590 Fri, 08 Jun 07 11:21 AM

They are all correct but you need to look at the meaning of the sentence in slightly different ways.

Wonderland Park's gardening team will offer its special growing tips. The gardening team will share its knowledge on growing plants.

Wonderland Park's gardening team will offer their special growing tips. Same meaning as above but concentrating on the individuals making up the team rather than the team as a whole. In British English nouns such as 'team' can be treated as either plural or singular. The team is going to...or (the members of) The team are going to...

Wonderland Park's gardening team will offer them special growing tips. This knowlege will be offered to all the fan club members who come along. The emphasis has shifted from who is offering the tips to who will be receiving them. IT's rather dispassionate though, more like a report on the event.

Wonderland Park's gardening team will offer you special growing tips. As above, the emphasis is now on who will be receiving the tips. If you come along you can get this advice. This encourages the individual receiving the invitation to attend, makes it more personal. This is how you would phrase it to make the advertising/invitations more effective.

nona the brit

Joined on Wed, Sep 22 2004

England

Veteran Member (11,353)

The name says it all.

Plurals, Nouns, British English, Invitations

Bokeh

#376609 Fri, 08 Jun 07 11:54 AM

Nona The Brit wrote:
In British English nouns such as 'team' can be treated as either plural or singular.

Nona, I think this is more a question of your ear being accustomed to this type of construction rather than it being good grammar. To me, also a British native, it is unacceptable.

Nona The Brit wrote:
Wonderland Park's gardening team will offer you special growing tips. As above, the emphasis is now on who will be receiving the tips. If you come along you can get this advice. This encourages the individual receiving the invitation to attend, makes it more personal. This is how you would phrase it to make the advertising/invitations more effective.

I disagree! Every pronoun requires an antecedent and the antecedent "Fun Club members" relates to the pronoun "them", not "you". Also,this notion forces the concept that every reader must be one of the "Fun Club members".

Bokeh

Grammar, Plurals, Constructions, Nouns, Pronouns, British English, Invitations

Yankee

#376653 Fri, 08 Jun 07 02:58 PM

I agree with Nona on all points, but would like to add that 'their' would also sound fine in AmE in this sentence.

Yankee

Joined on Sat, Apr 15 2006

Connecticut, USA

Senior Member (4,157)

Amy "You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." - Mark Twain

Grammar Geek

#376656 Fri, 08 Jun 07 03:10 PM

And I agree with Yankee, agreeing with Nona.

While in the US, we do ususally use the singular for words such as "team" in this case, each of the individual members may have a different area of expertise, and I want to hear from all of them.

Bokeh, I don't understand your object to these. Can you try to explain why you think they are wrong again?

Grammar Geek

Joined on Tue, Jan 10 2006

Pennsylvania, USA

Veteran Member (15,583)

Barbara, who answers in American English.

nona the brit

#376670 Fri, 08 Jun 07 04:01 PM

Hi Bokeh,

team for plural - you may not like it personally but it is accepted as grammatically correct.

Yes, the use of 'you' does mean that the recipient is a member. So? There are plenty of contexts where this could be the case. It could be in the club's newsletter. IT could be on an invitation card. I did point out that this personalised it into an invitation. The activities of a gardening club are generally not widely broadcast to those who are not members, but in that case 'them' would be better. To write an invitation to an individual (or an advertisment/leaflet) without personalising it despite earlier defining a restricted group that invitation applies to, would sound ridiculous.

Would you write an advertisement that said

Pensioners! They can get half price hair cuts...

instead of

Pensioners! You can get half price hair cuts ...

nona the brit

Plurals, Invitations

Bokeh

#376689 Fri, 08 Jun 07 05:06 PM

Hi Nona,

Nona The Brit wrote:
team for plural - you may not like it personally but it is accepted as grammatically correct.

Accepted by whom? Can you provide a citation?

A Google search returns: "team is" 12.4 million; "team are" 1.2 million; that's more than 10:1 in favour of the singular. Even that is not truely representative since the "team are" search returns many grammatically correct sentences that do not comply with this context, such as: Two members of the team are skilled and experienced researchers.

Nona The Brit wrote:

Would you write an advertisement that said

Pensioners! They can get half price hair cuts...

instead of

Pensioners! You can get half price hair cuts ...

I wouldn't write either. Maybe: "Pensioners eligible for half price haircuts" (no pronoun needed here and the outcome is a little like a tabloid headline); or "if you are a pensioner, you are eligible for a half price hair cut" (this makes eligibility conditional to being a pensioner).

Grammar Geek wrote:
Bokeh, I don't understand your object to these. Can you try to explain why you think they are wrong again?

Hi GG

Everyone is in agreement over "them" and "its" so there's no point discussing those.

Grammar Geek wrote:

we do ususally use the singular for words such as "team" in this case, each of the individual members may have a different area of expertise, and I want to hear from all of them.

"Team" is clearly singular. If you were to want to use the pronoun "their" the sentence should be: Wonderland Park's gardening team members will offer their special growing tips.

As for using the pronoun "you" the problem is it doesn't have concordance with the antecedent "Fun Club members". Can you explain how you believe "Fun Club members" (third person) can take a second person pronoun in the subsequent sentence?

Bokeh

Grammar, Plurals, Nouns, Pronouns, Whom, Conditionals

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