grammar question?

Question

we have these ridiculous grammar drills in english and today the sentence was
"Some of my friends bought me a ticket to the game."
or somthing along those lines. I thought the subject was friends, but the teacher told me it was Some. Can someone explain that to me. He said it's becasue it's a pronoun, but in "Her shoes were red" shoes is still the subject and it has a pronoun in front of it. I don't completely understand why, and I'd really like to.

Answer 1

The subject of the verb "bought" is actually "some of my friends", and the nucleus (= the subject´s most important part) is "some" (as far as SYNTAX). That is why "some" is considered to be the "subject". It restricts the meaning of "my friends" in the sense that it was not "my friends" who bought me the ticket (it was "some of them").

However, SEMANTICALLY speaking, "friends" is more important because it is a "content word" ("some", on the other hand, is a "function word"). Therefore, as I see it, your teacher's argument is based on SYNTAX and yours, on SEMANTICS. Technically, of course, he is right although your doubt raises a very interesting point.

In "her shoes were red", "her" is a possessive ADJECTIVE, that is, "her" modifies the noun "shoes" indicating "possession". In other words, it refers to something that "she" possesses (as to oppposed to "he", "we", etc.). As you can see, it is a totally different story. But if we had a sentence like "some of her shoes are red", then we would apply the same logic as in the previous sentence.

Answer 2

your teacher is right. some is a pronoun that represents a group (friends).

in the second sentence....her is not a pronoun but rather an adjective because it answers the question of WHOSE shoes they are.