each other & one another

What kind of words or phrases are they ? And how can we use them correctly!

Well, in grammar we call them ‘reciprocal pronouns’, and they, like the reflexive pronouns (‘myself’, ‘yourself’, ‘ourselves’ and so on), are part of the linguistic class of the so-called ‘anaphores’. (Don’t get me started on that, or I’ll start rambling on Noam Chomsky’s Government and Binding theories… Scary stuff, trust me!)

In the case of reflexive pronouns, the one who does the action is the same as the one who suffers the action.

e.g.: I wash myself. (I do the washing, I get the benefits for it)

With reciprocal pronouns, there are two or more entities who do the same thing, each one doing it on the others.

e.g.: John and Mary congratulated each other. (John congratulated Mary and Mary congratulated John.)

Correct use:

Each other – when there are just two people involved.

e.g.: The two friends hugged each other.

One another – when there are three or more people involved.

e.g.: The seven members of the basketball team hugged one another.

Whew!

Fikry, I hope I made myself clear… :)

English tutors, correct me if I’m wrong! :D

wow! you are fantastic Sandra! Just the same as what I was going to explain. Great work girl : )

so , read my second post on( too and very) please, and give me your opinion …

Thanks Fikry!

Well, it would have been a shame for me not to be able to explain – considering I’m majoring in English and I’ll be teaching linguistics someday (hopefully!!!)…

Very nice of you to suggest such language problems, I’ll answer to your other post right away! :)

Thanks Sandra for this explanation :-)

I wonder how this translates into other languages. Maybe tutors of other languages could comment about this for their language. I know that for Spanish learners, this is a source of confusion. The reflexive pronouns, “se” and “nos” can sometimes offer ambiguity because they can also be used as reciprocal pronouns. For example, “Se ayudaron”, can mean both “They helped themselves” and “They helped each other”. Fortunately, in Spanish, there are some phrases that clarify the meaning of this sentence to mean one or the other.
If you add on the words, “sí mismos”, as in, “Se ayudaron sí mismos.” the sentence means," They helped themselves." If you add the words, “los unos a los otros” ( there are other combinations, too) then the meaning of this sentence changes to mean, “They helped one another.” When I was learning Spanish, this was very confusing at times, so I understand how language can be confusing. Thank goodness we have great tutors at Edufire like Sandra, to help students with these nuances in language!!!

Hey, you made me blush! :)) Glad I was able to explain!

Candy, you’re absolutely right about how confusing different languages can be… The example you gave goes the very same way in Romanian as well: S-au ajutat ei înşişi and S-au ajutat unii pe alţii, with S-au ajutat alone that can mean either of the two…

Well, girl! You are good! There’s no denying that! That’s good to know about Romanian. I hope other tutors will tell us whether this happens in their language. I am studying Mandarin and I doubt this happens when speaking this language. I don’t think this occurs in the Hawaiian language either.

I know very little about Mandarin and nothing at all about Hawaiian, but I doubt this occurs in these languages. It seems that this usage of the reflexives is only common for Romance languages… (the ‘myself’, ‘yourself’ etc of English are so different from the ‘se’ we talked about!)