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Pronoun

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. The substituted noun is the antecedent of the pronoun.

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, John 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 distinctions. 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 certain 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".

English

Pronouns are unusual in English in that, unlike the nouns they replace, they are inflected; i.e., there are different versions of the word depending on the function it is serving in the sentence, so a speaker uses:

• "I" when he or she is the subject of the sentence (Nominative case)
• "me" when he or she is the object of the sentence (Accusative case)
• "my" when he or she owns something (Genitive case)
• "me" when the pronoun stands on its own (Disjunctive pronoun, as in "Who's there?" "It's only me.")

In other languages too (e.g., German), pronouns are more inflected than nouns.

The remainder of this article explains the different kinds of pronoun in more detail.

Personal pronouns in English

A Personal pronoun refer to people or things. The English personal pronouns are: First person is the speaker(s), Second is the person spoken to and third is someone else. Reflexive is when the doer of the action is the same as what the action was done to. Possessive pronouns are used to show ownership of something.

	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

1. Sometime between 1600 and 1800, the forms of Thou began to pass out of common usage in most places, except in poetry, archaic-style literature, and descriptions of other languages' pronouns. Thou refers to one person who is familiar, though as in other European languages, it is also used of God. Thou still exists in northern England and Scotland, and in some Christian religious communities.
2. In Scotland, ye is the plural you. In older times and in some other places, ye is the nominative case and you is the accusative case. Some English dialects generalised ye, while standard English generalised you. Some dialects use ye as a clipped or clitic form of you.
3. Though using They as a singular pronoun when sex is not known or is not important is often condemned by traditionalists, its often found in informal speech. It is actually a revival of an earlier usage and may one day become standard usage because it is so common, and avoids ugly constructions like "he or she". This usage is authorised and prefered by the Australian Government Manual of Style for official usage in government documents.
4. Y'all, Youse and You-uns are often used in colloquial speech as a plural you. Saying you was and You were to distinguish the same thing is also done.
5. The only common distinction between singular and plural you is in the reflexive and emphatic forms.
6. English regional dialects often use variant pronouns.

The Disjunctive pronoun

The disjunctive pronoun is the form used when the pronoun stands on its own, or with only the verb "to be": for example in answer to the question "Who wrote this page?". Disjunctive pronouns in English have caused some dispute. The natural answer for most English speakers in this context would be "me", parallel to the French "moi". Unfortunately, some grammarians have argued, and persuaded parts of the educational system, that the correct answer should be "I" (perhaps under the mistaken belief that English requires the subject and copula of the verb "to be" to agree; while this is true in Latin, it is untrue in other languages, e.g. French). This leads to affected sounding usages like, "It is I!".

Pronouns not found in English

Other languages may have more personal pronouns. Some languages have three different pronouns instead of "We": one meaning "Me and you", one meaning "Me and them" and one meaning "Me, you and them". Slavic languages have two different 3rd person Genitive pronouns (example from Serbian language:)

• Ana je dala Mariji njenu knjigu. - Ana gave her (Maria's) book to Maria.
• Ana je dala Mariji svoju knjigu. - Ana gave her (Ana's) book to Maria.

Table of correlatives

Most of these other pronouns can be arranged in a table of correlatives like the one conceived by L. L. Zamenhof. Many languages form these pronouns in a similar way, so it might be just as valid for, say, another language. For English, the Table of Correlatives looks like this:

	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

Some languages have more correlatives than others. For example, while English only distinguishes between referents close to the speaker (this, here) and far from the speaker (that, there), Japanese makes a three-way distinction between close to the speaker (kore, koko), close to the listener (sore, soko), and far from both (are, asoko). Early Modern English made a similar distinction between this/here, that/there, and yon/yonder.

One of the most salient features of modern 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, nor do several ancient Indo-European languages. For example, both Latin and ancient Greek distinguish the relative pronoun from the interrogative pronoun.

French language Pronouns

Personal pronouns:

	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

The French possessive pronouns (mon, ma, mes, ton, ta, tes, son, sa, ses, notre, notre, nos, votre, votre, vos, leur, leur, leurs) are technically adjectives because they decline into masculine, feminine and plural forms and further agree with their heads (not their antecedents).

Pronouns for respect

Many languages contain different pronouns used to show varying levels of respect. See T-V distinction.

See also

• Deixis
• Pronoun game