In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a word that usually takes the place of a noun previously mentioned, such as "I", "me", "she", "it", and so on.
Pronouns are one of the basic parts of speech, along with nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. A pronoun is the part of speech that substitutes for nouns or noun phrases and designates persons or things asked for, previously specified, or understood from the context.
For example, consider the sentence "John gave the coat to Alice." All three nouns in the sentence can be replaced by pronouns to give: "He gave it to her." If the coat, Joan and Alice have been previously mentioned, the listener can deduce what the pronouns "he", "it" and "her" refer to and the understand the meaning of the sentence.
In the English language, which pronoun is used to replace a noun can depend on inflection, gender and number. For example, the speaker uses "I", "me", "myself" depending on the role he plays in the sentence; pronouns such as "he" and "she" depend on grammatical gender, and "I" and "we" depend on the number of people.
Other languages may use different distintions. Kinuvo, a language spoken in Tanzania uses grammatical gender to distinguish between humans, animals, body parts and so on. The English dialect spoken in Dorset also does this to a certian extent, using "ee" for animate beings and "er" for inanimate.
Cherokee has several pronouns corresponding to the English "we" to mean "you and I", "another person and I" and "several other people and I".
Table of contents |
2 Personal pronouns in English 3 The Disjunctive pronoun 4 Pronouns not found in English 5 Table of correlatives 6 French language Pronouns 7 Pronouns for respect |
The remainder of this article explains the different kinds of pronoun in more detail.
Singular | Plural | |
---|---|---|
1st nom | I | we |
2nd nom. | thou(1), you | you, ye, y'all(4), youse(4), you-uns(4), you-guys |
3rd nom. | he, she, it, they(3) | they |
1st acc | me | us |
2nd acc. | thee(1), you | you, ye(2) |
3rd acc. | him, her, it, them(3) | them |
1st gen | my | our |
2nd gen. | thy(1), your | your |
3rd gen. | his, her, its, their(3) | their |
1st noun | mine | ours |
2nd noun | thine(1), yours | yours |
3rd noun | his, hers, its, theirs(3) | theirs |
1st refl. | myself | ourselves |
2nd refl. | thyself(1), yourself(5) | yourselves(6) |
3rd refl. | himself, herself, itself, themself(3) | themselves |
Query | This | That | Some | No | Every | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adjective | which | this | that | some | no | every |
Person | who | this | that | someone | no one | everyone |
Thing | what | this | that | something | nothing | everything |
Place | where | here | there | somewhere | nowhere | everywhere |
Time | when | now | then | sometime | never | always |
Way | how | thus | somehow | |||
Reason | why |
One of the most salient features of Indo-European languages is that pronouns are ambiguous. Is 'Who' relative or interrogative? Is it true that 'that' is a relative or demonstrative? Which kind is 'which?'
Most other language families don't have this ambiguity.
Singular | Plural | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
1st nom. | je | nous | ||
1st acc. | me | nous | ||
1st dat. | me | nous | ||
1st disj. | moi | nous | ||
2nd nom. | tu | vous | ||
2nd acc. | te | vous | ||
2nd dat. | te | vous | ||
2nd disj. | toi | vous | ||
3rd nom. | il | elle | ils | elles |
3rd acc. | le | la | les | les |
3rd dat. | lui | lui | leur | leur |
3rd disj. | lui | elle | eux | elles |
Many languages contain different pronouns used to show varying levels of respect. See T-V distinction.