Could anyone please explain this to me?

Question

In the sentence:
John asked Marry to throw his old deck of cards away.
-> In this situation, John is male and Marry is female, so it's easy to know that the old deck of cards is John's.
But in this sentence:
John asked Tom to throw his old deck of cards away
How can we know whether the old deck of cards is John's or Tom's?

Clive · Accepted Answer

Hi,

But in this sentence:
John asked Tom to throw his old deck of cards away
How can we know whether the old deck of cards is John's or Tom's?

The grammar convention is that 'his' refers to the closest previous noun that is suitable and that makes sense, ie that is male. Here, it is 'Tom'.

If the deck belongs to John, say
eg John asked Tom to throw John's old deck of cards away.

But people sometimes speak carelessly, so if it is extremely important you should ask the speaker to confirm his meaning.

Clive

KMagic · Answer

Thanks so much. I understand it.

Anonymous · Answer

You often run across sentences like this in writing or speech.  There is no problem with it because the context will always make it clear who the deck belongs to.  And if it is not clear from the context, then what does it matter anyway whose deck of cards they were?   In matters more important than an old deck of cards, you can always ask for clarification.  So this is never really a problem.  I have never in my life run into a problem with something like this.

Could anyone please explain this to me?

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