DAVID: Hello, grammarians. Hello visiting cousin Beth. 

BETH: Hello, cousin David. 

DAVID: So today, we're going to be talking about pronoun antecedent agreement. 

BETH: And what is that? 

DAVID: So an antecedent is a thing that goes before. So ante means before. And cedent is like a going thing. 

So what I mean by that is if we're talking about if we set up something in a sentence-- so OK, so we've got a sentence like Gillian rode her bike to the grocery store. Fine. Straight up sentence. Pretty ordinary. 

If we want to refer to Gillian again, but we want to use a pronoun, well, we'd refer to Gillian as she. That's a woman's name. So she bought some garlic and a spoon like you normally would when you go to the grocery store. 

So when we talk about this pronoun she in relation to this word, this proper noun, Gillian, Gillian is the antecedent, is the thing that goes before the pronoun she. So whenever you use a pronoun, you are referring back to something else, the thing that went before, the antecedent, the thing that has come previously. 

And so you want to make sure that these things match up. So for example, we know from living in this culture that Gillian is a woman's name. So it would probably be incorrect to refer to her as he. 

Gillian rode her bike to the grocery store. He bought some garlic and a spoon. This sounds like we're talking about someone else. So even within this initial sentence too, Gillian rode her bike to the grocery store, we're referring back to Gillian using this possessive pronoun to define the bicycle. 

BETH: Oh, because it's a longer sentence. 

DAVID: Well, we're using it to demonstrate the relationship between Gillian and the bicycle. 

BETH: Gotcha. 

DAVID: Yeah. And you also want to make sure that pronouns and their antecedents agree in number. So if you said-- what's a fun animal? 

BETH: Monkeys. 

DAVID: Monkeys. So the monkeys threw snowballs, but they had crummy aim. So we're using they to refer back to the monkeys. 

So this thing is a plural noun. We're referring to multiple monkeys. So it would be incorrect to say the monkeys threw snowballs, but it had crummy aim because this makes it seem like we're talking about one monkey, when, in fact, we are talking about an army of snowball chucking monkeys. 

So we've got our little monkey, maybe a colobus monkey or maybe a Diana monkey. It's got a little tuft. It's throwing a snowball. 

But if that's an old world monkey, it probably doesn't have a prehensile tail. It just, sort of, has a little tail. But let's say we have a whole bunch of them. We want to make sure that we are operating under the standards of agreement. Beth, any questions? 

BETH: So you can't have it anymore because now you've got four monkeys. 

DAVID: So let me get rid of that. So what should it be instead, Beth? 

BETH: They because they is plural, and we don't know if they're he's or she's. 

DAVID: And even if we didn't, they kind of eliminates any kind of gender distinction. So the monkeys threw snowballs, but they had crummy aim. Although these monkeys seem to be doing pretty good at hitting each other in the heads and the tails with their snowballs. 

So that's pronoun antecedent agreement. So remember to make sure to line things up when relevant by gender. So Gillian rode her bike. She bought some garlic and a spoon. And by number, so the monkeys threw snowballs, but they had crummy aim. 

So there's more than one monkey. So you'd want to use the plural third person pronoun. You can learn anything. David out. 

BETH: And Beth out.