Themselves used after words like ‘everyone’, ‘anyone’ , ‘no one’ etc
In LDOCE6:
themselves pronoun.
One of the definitions:
used after words like ‘everyone’, ‘anyone’, ‘no one’ etc when you talk about someone already mentioned and you do not know what sex they are or it is not important. Many teachers think this is not correct English:
Someone told me they’d actually seen the accident happen themselves.
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If the usage above is not correct, how can I use it correctly?
Maybe like this?
Someone told me they’d actually seen the accident happen himself/herself.
Thanks!
Top answer
Someone told me they ’d actually seen the accident happen themselves . Believe it or not, it is okay, though there may be some ambiguity about who "they" refers to -- I'll assume the referent of "someone" and "they" (and thus "themselves") is the same. "Themselves" is being used here as a gender-neutral reflexive pronoun instead of "himself" or "herself".
- Someone told me they ’d actually seen the accident happen themselves .
- Believe it or not, it is okay, though there may be some ambiguity about who "they" refers to -- I'll assume the referent of "someone" and "they" (and thus "themselves") is the same.
- "Themselves" is being used here as a gender-neutral reflexive pronoun instead of "himself" or "herself".
- The alternative "himself/herself" is possible, but often frowned on as being clumsy.
- The problem with "themselves" is that it sounds odd when the antecedent is just one person.
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Someone told me they’d actually seen the accident happen themselves.
Believe it or not, it is okay, though there may be some ambiguity about who "they" refers to -- I'll assume the referent of "someone" and "they" (and thus "themselves") is the same. "Themselves" is being used here as a gender-neutral reflexive pronoun instead of "himself" or "herself". The a
0kadioguySomeone told me they’d actually seen the accident happen themselves
I'm a non-native and for me the sentence above have two subjects: the first one in the matrix clause - "Someone" (singular), the second in the subordinate clause - "they". Hence singularity of the pronoun someone stands in opposition to plurality of they. Very confusin
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