IT'S very well-established in English grammar that (1) the verb must always agree with the number — singular or plural — of the noun or pronoun that does or states the action, and that (2) the pronoun or its possessive form must always agree with the gender — male, female, or neuter — of its antecedent noun. We thus routinely make verbs perfectly agree with the number of the noun or pronoun doing or stating them: "Eve loves apples straight from the tree." "Eve and Adam love apples straight from the tree." We also consistently make the pronoun and possessive pronoun perfectly agree with the gender of their respective antecedent nouns: "Eve loves apples; her friend Adam also loves them."
But problems arise when we use indefinite pronouns — those words that, without specific antecedent nouns, we use as the action's doers or receivers. It's often obvious whether an indefinite pronoun is singular or plural, but at times there's no way of knowing what gender to use for its possessive form. Consider the indefinite pronouns "all" and "somebody" in this sentence: "All of us [is, are] agreed that the task must be done, but somebody who has [his, her] personal interests foremost in [his, her] mind must inhibit [himself, herself] from doing it." That we should use the verb "are" for the pronoun "all" is clear, of course, but whether to use "his" or "her" as the possessive of the pronoun "somebody," and whether to use "himself" or "herself" as its reflexive pronoun, are very thorny choices indeed!
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