Question

The orchard walls are high and hard to climb, And the place death, considering who thou art, If any of my kinsmen find thee here. In about 100 words, identify the indefinite pronoun, its antecedent (which might not come before the pronoun in the sentence), and the verb in the following sentence from Romeo and Juliet. Explain which of the hints given to you in the lesson applies to how the pronoun and antecedent are in agreement with the verb in terms of number.

Answer 1

The orchard walls are high and hard to climb, And the place death, considering who thou art, If any of my kinsmen find thee here.

Any is the indefinite pronoun because it means something like "it does not matter who of my kinsmen as long as the person is one of my kinsmen" although Present Day English demands agreement as third person singular (if any of you agrees) in the passage the agreement is third person plural because from the point of view of meaning [any of my kinsmen] can be replaced as they  and the verb find agrees with this plural idea.

Present Day British English has this kind of agreement called collective noun which grammatically can function like the pronoun they, for example as in the committee have started the meeting). The word police is another example of collective noun by taking third person plural agreement as in the sentence The police have arrived.