Question

Choose the appropriate forms of pronouns and complete the sentence:
Were you not invited to the party? Everybody but ____ was present there. ____ all missed you.
a) you ; yourself
b) you ; us
c) you ; we
d) yourself ; we

Answer 1

Hint: Pronouns replace a noun that's mentioned in the sentence or the sentence before, to avoid repetition. In the above sentence, both blanks need pronouns.

Complete answer:
Nouns are naming words. However, one cannot use nouns all the time. So, there are placeholder words that replace nouns, called pronouns.
Words like ‘I’, ‘You’, ‘She’, ‘He’, and ‘They’ are pronouns.

There are also words like ‘myself’, ‘yourself’, ‘herself’, ‘himself’, and ‘themselves’ which are called reflexive pronouns, also called emphatic pronouns. They match with certain pronouns and can only be used with their correct partner. However, in this case, one cannot use reflexive pronouns.

Now that we know what pronouns are, let’s look at our options one by one:

a) you/yourself - The first pronoun fits perfectly into the given sentence, but the second pronoun does not, as it is a reflexive pronoun. This is not grammatically correct. This is not the required answer. So, this is an incorrect option.
b) you/us - The first pronoun fits perfectly into the given sentence, but the second pronoun does not fit as it is an incorrect pronoun. This is not grammatically correct. This is not the required answer. So, this is an incorrect option.
c) you/we - The first pronoun and the second pronoun fit perfectly into the given sentence. This construction is grammatically correct. This is the required answer. So, this is the correct option.
d) yourself/we - The second pronoun fits perfectly into the given sentence, but the first pronoun does not, as it is a reflexive pronoun. This is not grammatically correct. This is not the required answer. So, this is an incorrect option.

Note:
Try to match the pronoun in the given sentence to the appropriate one in the given options. This will help you find the appropriate option accordingly.