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In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a word or form that substitutes for a noun or noun phrase. It is a particular case of a pro-form.

Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, although many modern theorists would not regard them as a single distinct word class, because of the variety of functions performed by words which are classed as pronouns. Common types include the personal pronouns, relative pronouns, interrogative pronouns, demonstrative pronouns and indefinite pronouns.

The use of pronouns often involves anaphora, where the meaning of the pronoun is dependent on another referential element. This applies particularly to the (third-person) personal pronouns. The referent of the pronoun is often the same as that of a preceding (or sometimes following) noun phrase, called the antecedent of the pronoun. For example, in the sentence That poor man looks as if he needs a new coat, the antecedent of the pronoun he is the noun phrase that poor man. (Pronouns used without antecedents are sometimes called unprecursed pronouns.) Another type of antecedent is that found with relative pronouns, as in the woman who looked at you, where the woman is the antecedent of the relative pronoun who.

Types of pronouns [edit]

Common types of pronouns found in the world's languages are as follows:

• Personal pronouns denote an entity of a specific grammatical person: first person (as in the case of I, me, we, etc.), second person (as in the case of you), or third person (he, she, they, etc.)
  • Subject pronouns are used when the person or thing is the subject of the sentence or clause. English example: I like to eat chips, but she does not.
    • Second person formal and informal pronouns (T-V distinction). For example, vous and tu in French. There is no distinction in modern English though Elizabethan English marked the distinction with "thou" (singular informal) and "you" (plural or singular formal).
    • Inclusive and exclusive "we" pronouns indicate whether the audience is included. There is no distinction in English.
    • Intensive pronouns, also known as emphatic pronouns, re-emphasize a noun or pronoun that has already been mentioned. English uses the same forms as the reflexive pronouns; for example: I did it myself (contrast reflexive use, I did it to myself).
  • Object pronouns are used when the person or thing is the object of the sentence or clause. English example: John likes me but not her.
    • Direct and indirect object pronouns. English uses the same oblique form for both; for example: Mary loves him (direct object); Mary sent him a letter (indirect object).
    • Reflexive pronouns are used when a person or thing acts on itself. English example: John cut himself.
    • Reciprocal pronouns refer to a reciprocal relationship. English example: They do not like each other.
  • Prepositional pronouns come after a preposition. No distinct forms exist in English; for example: Anna and Maria looked at him.
  • Disjunctive pronouns are used in isolation or in certain other special grammatical contexts. No distinct forms exist in English; for example: Who does this belong to? Me.
  • Dummy pronouns are used when grammatical rules require a noun (or pronoun), but none is semantically required. English example: It is raining.
  • Weak pronouns.
• Possessive pronouns are used to indicate possession or ownership.
  • In a strict sense, the possessive pronouns are only those that act syntactically as nouns. English example: Those clothes are mine.
  • Often, though, the term "possessive pronoun" is also applied to the so-called possessive determiners (or possessive adjectives). For example, in English: I lost my wallet. They are not strictly speaking pronouns^{[citation needed]} because they do not substitute for a noun or noun phrase, and as such, some grammarians classify these terms in a separate lexical category called determiners (they have a syntactic role close to that of adjectives, always qualifying a noun).
• Demonstrative pronouns distinguish the particular objects or people that are referred to from other possible candidates. English example: I'll take these.
• Indefinite pronouns refer to general categories of people or things. English example: Anyone can do that.
  • Distributive pronouns are used to refer to members of a group separately rather than collectively. English example: To each his own.
  • Negative pronouns indicate the non-existence of people or things. English example: Nobody thinks that.
• Relative pronouns refer back to people or things previously mentioned. English example: People who smoke should quit now.
  • Indefinite relative pronouns have some of the properties of both relative pronouns and indefinite pronouns. They have a sense of "referring back", but the person or thing to which they refer has not previously been explicitly named. English example: I know what I like.
• Interrogative pronouns ask which person or thing is meant. English example: Who did that?
  • In many languages (e.g., Czech, English, French, Interlingua, and Russian), the sets of relative and interrogative pronouns are nearly identical. Compare English: Who is that? (interrogative) to I know who that is. (relative).

Pronouns and determiners [edit]

Pronouns and determiners are closely related, and some linguists think pronouns are actually determiners without a noun or a noun phrase.^[1] The following chart shows their relationships in English.

The views of different schools [edit]

Pronouns have been classified as one of the parts of speech since at least the 2nd century BC when they were included in the Greek treatise Art of Grammar. Objections to this approach have appeared among grammatical theories in the 20th century. Their grammatical heterogeneity, many-sided pronouns were underlined, which were classified as follows:^{[clarification needed]}

• "indicative words" (Karl Brugmann, Karl Bühler, Uriel Weinreich);
• "indexes" or "indicators" (Charles Sanders Peirce, William Edward Collinson);
• "words with changeable signification" (Adolf Noreen);
• "moveable identifiers" (Otto Jespersen, Roman Jakobson);
• "updating" or "means of transferring from language to speech" (Charles Bally, Émile Benveniste);
• "words of subjective-objective lexical meaning" (Alexey Peshkovsky);
• "word remnants" or "substitutes" (Lev Shcherba, Leonard Bloomfield, Zellig Harris);
• "determiners whose NP complements have been deleted" (Paul Postal);^[1]
• "represents" (Ferdinand Brunot);
• "survivals of a special part of speech" (Viktor Vinogradov).^[2]

Pronominals [edit]

A pronominal is a phrase that acts as a pronoun. For example, in I want that kind, the phrase that kind stands for a noun phrase that can be deduced from context, and may thus be called a pronominal.

See also [edit]

Personal pronouns In English

• English personal pronouns
• Old English pronouns

In other languages

• Bulgarian pronouns
• Cantonese pronouns
• Chinese pronouns
• Dutch grammar: Pronouns
• Esperanto grammar: Pronouns
• French pronouns
• German pronouns
• Ido pronouns
• Interlingua pronouns
• Irish morphology: Pronouns
• Italian grammar: Pronouns
• Japanese pronouns
• Korean pronouns
• Macedonian pronouns
• Novial: Pronouns
• Portuguese personal pronouns
• Proto-Indo-European pronouns
• Slovene pronouns
• Spanish grammar: Pronouns
• Vietnamese pronouns

General

• Anaphora (linguistics)
• Cataphora
• Clusivity
• Gender-specific pronoun
• Gender-neutral pronoun
• Generic antecedents
• Deixis
• Inalienable possession
• Phi features
• Pro-form
• Pronoun game

References [edit]

External links [edit]

Look up pronoun in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Mark Baltin, "The copy theory of movement and the binding-theoretic status of A-traces"