English Grammar Drills

Pronouns 77
4. I told them that I would do it by .
5. It was so noisy that we couldn’t hear think.
6. The trip could almost pay for .
7. The workers were putting out of a job.
8. It was such an interesting book that the pages seemed to turn .
9. The system is designed to shut off in the event of an emergency.
10. Don’t be so hard on .
11. All successful politicians believe in .
12. We wanted the children to be able to look after .
13. Jane encouraged Sam to do it .
14. Try doing it by .
15. I can’t stand traveling by .
There is another, completely different use of reflexive pronouns as well. We can add reflexive
pronouns to a sentence just for emphasis. For example, consider the following sentence:
I wouldn’t turn down the offer myself.
Here the reflexive pronoun myself has been added to an already complete sentence just for
emphasis. Unlike a normal reflexive pronoun that plays the role of object of a verb or a pronoun,
this pronoun has no grammatical role at all. We can delete it:
I wouldn’t turn down the offer myself.
or move it right after its antecedent:
I myself wouldn’t turn down the offer.
Here are some more examples of reflexive pronouns added for emphasis, each with a paraphrase
showing that the emphatic reflexive pronoun can be deleted or moved to a position immediately
following the antecedent.