Do the following sentences seem strange to you?

1. John Smith saw John Smith in the mirror.

2. My friends were talking among my friends.

3. Sam's only cat was grooming Sam's only cat.

These sentences are strange because they're missing reflexive pronouns, those pronouns that end in -self or -selves. As you can see from the sentences below, we use reflexive pronouns whenever we refer to the same person or thing more than once in the same basic sentence. Sentences 1–3 should be stated like this:

1. 4. John Smith saw himself in the mirror.

2. 5. My best friends were talking among themselves.

3. 6. Sam's only cat was grooming herself.

Here are some more examples, first without and then with a reflexive pronoun.

1. 7a. The boy washed the boy.

2. 7b. The boy washed himself.

3. 8a. Tom and Harry watched Tom and Harry on the video.

4. 8b. Tom and Harry watched themselves on the video.

5. 9a. You can see you doing that.

6. 9b. You can see yourself doing that.

Notice that if we hear, for example, The boy washed the boy, without a reflexive pronoun, then we assume that someone's talking about two different boys. Similarly, the sentence He shaved him suggests that the person (a male) who did the shaving and the person (a male) who received the shaving are not the same. The reflexive pronoun lets the listener know that the speaker is referring to the same person or thing.

What are the features of this book that will help you use it effectively?

• We assume no prior knowledge of English grammar. Depending on your background and interest, you can either work the book through from cover to cover or just read about selected topics.

• We utilize user-friendly, easy-to-understand language, avoiding excessive technical terminology.

• Information is presented in lesson format; most lessons are short, helping to make the material manageable.

• Numerous exercises allow you to test yourself after new information is presented; the exercises gradually incorporate more knowledge while building on prior information.

• Each exercise has a sample item done for you, to help you with the exercise.

• Each exercise is separated into two parts: Getting started and More practice. With each Getting started part, we provide a page reference to the answers, so you'll immediately know whether or not you're on the right track. For More practice items, answers are provided on the accompanying website.

• In addition to exercises, each lesson contains easy to find Quick tips. These provide convenient “tricks” to help you master the material or highlight the main concepts in each lesson.

• We've also included short sections called To enhance your understanding. These sections are intended for those of you who are interested in more than basic information. These sections can easily be skipped by beginners; they're not necessary for understanding any material later on in the book.

• Throughout the text, ungrammatical sentences are identified with an asterisk (*) at the beginning.

One interesting characteristic of language is that sentences can be related, in a consistent way, to other sentences. What do we mean by this? Let's start by looking at some related sentences which we've seen before.

1. 1a. She looked up the answer.

2. 1b. She looked the answer up.

3. 2a. We will just drop off the files.

4. 2b. We will just drop the files off.

5. 3a. The professor pointed out the correct answer.

6. 3b. The professor pointed the correct answer out.

You can see that one member of each pair is related to the other in a systematic way: the verb and its particle (both underlined) can either be next to each other or the particle can be on the other side of the next noun phrase. (See Lesson 11.) The important point here is that we can't change the structure of a sentence in any random way. For example, we can't say *She up looked the answer.

Let's look at other examples of related sentences:

1. 4a. Mary gave the information to Robert.

2. 4b. Mary gave Robert the information.

3. 5a. She told the truth to her grand daughter.

4. 5b. She told her grand daughter the truth.

5. 6a. They bought a car for their teenage daughter.

6. 6b. They bought their teenage daughter a car.

Once again, you can see that these indirect object pairs are related to each other in a systematic way. (See Lesson 40.) And again, we can't just randomly change them; for example, we can't say, *Mary Robert the information gave.

Test yourself 38.1

1. The servant accompanied His Lordship.

2. Jean participated in the Tour de France.

3. Such families have often preferred to travel in style.

4. They could do nothing except run.

5. Mr. Tower quietly explained all this to his son.

Test yourself 38.2

1. The Hotel Regina is an attractive place.

2. It became the best-known symbol of Paris.

3. The local merchants were on his side.

4. Charles looked thoughtful.

5. Christine seemed insecure.

Test yourself 38.3

1. The editor looked for new ideas for the magazine.

2. You can rely on the experts at that company.

3. Maggie usually goes berry picking in the summer.

4. Roger is happy with his new computer.

5. The workers went on strike for a couple of weeks.

As we mentioned in Lesson 46, a sentence can contain more than one sentence within it, for example:

1. Jane put the glass vase on the table and her mother picked it up.

This is an example of a compound sentence. It actually contains two sentences. The first is: Jane put the glass vase on the table. The second is: Her mother picked it up. Since a sentence within a sentence is called a clause, we can also say that sentence 1 contains two clauses. Just as a simple sentence must contain at least a subject and a verb phrase, each of the sentences (clauses) within a compound sentence must contain its own subject and verb phrase.

Recall from Lesson 18 that conjunctions, like and, or, and but, join things. In fact, the two sentences with in sentence 1 are joined by the conjunction and. Recall also that there are two kinds of conjunctions, coordinating and subordinating. The sentences in a compound sentence are joined together by a coordinating conjunction. As we discussed in Lesson 18, there are three common coordinating conjunctions; they are and, or, and but. Four less common ones are for, so, yet, and nor. (Remember FANBOYS, which contains the first letter of each.)