Posted by rfvv on Tuesday, November 22, 2016 at 12:22pm.
An airplane is a vehicle with wings and one or more engines that enable it to fly through
the air
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In this sentence, what does 'it' refer to? Does 'it' refer to 'an airplane' or 'a device'? •English - Steve, Tuesday, November 22, 2016 at 1:25pm
I'd say device.
It's a device with wings and engines.
The whole mechanism is called an airplane.
•English - rfvv, Tuesday, November 22, 2016 at 9:47pm
An airplane is a vehicle with wings and one or more engines that enable itself to fly through the air
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Thank you for your help. If 'it' refers to 'a device', don't we use 'itself'?
I understand your explanation.
I found my mistake.
You could delete this posting.
An airplane is a vehicle with wings and one or more engines that enable it to fly through the air.
In that sentence, the pronoun "it" is referring to its direct antecedent -- "vehicle."
http://www.chompchomp.com/terms/pronounreference.htm
Read ALL of this.
In the sentence you provided, "it" refers to "an airplane." When we say "An airplane is a vehicle with wings and one or more engines that enable it to fly through the air," we are referring specifically to the airplane as a whole.
As for your question about using "itself," we generally use "itself" when the subject of the sentence is performing an action on itself. In this case, the airplane is not acting upon itself, so we do not use "itself" in the sentence. Instead, we use "it" to refer to the airplane as the subject of the sentence.