<p>Hi,</p>
<p>I'm having a bit of trouble with the sentence completing questions. When is the pronoun ambiguous and when it is clear? Really starting to get confused with these pronouns. Basically, what pronouns can be ambiguous? Can "we" or "us" ever be ambiguous? </p>
<p>To my understanding,
We had the ball. <-- grammatically correct
They had the ball. <-- grammatically incorrect because it doesnt specify who 'they' is
We gave them the ball <--grammatically incorrect(gave who the ball?)</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>Well if you have the pronoun "they" and you also had the subjects "cats" and "dogs" then it would be ambiguous because you don't know which one is for which.</p>
<p>Another example, "Jane gave her mom the cake, so [she] was happy." <---the pronoun "she" is ambiguous because it could refer to Jane or her mom; don't assume anything.</p>
<p>we== my team (implicit)</p>
<p>they==has to refer to someone. They who?</p>
<p>we them ?</p>
<p>we (my team) gave them(some other team) the ball--who did you give the ball to ?</p>
<p>What about if the cats and dogs wasnt there. What if it just said "They gave the ball." Is there a error in that sentence because we dont know who 'they' is, or is it fine?</p>
<p>y is the 2nd and 3rd one incorrect, it looks fine</p>
<p>"they" who? who is "they?" (yes, i purposefully didn't put who ARE "they?" because i was referring to the word.. who does "they" represent? is what i'm saying)</p>
<p>same goes for "them"</p>