PRONOUN

Personal pronouns

Standard English

personal pronouns:

You | Thou | We |

They | Them | It

Parts of speech:

Subjective

Possessive

Determinacy:

Dummy

Generic you

Singular they

Inclusive and

exclusive we

Pluralis majestatis

T-V distinction

Gender issues:

Androgynous

Gender-specific

Gender-neutral

Spivak | Ve | Xe |

Ze | Sie/hir

Slang:

Y'all | Yinz

Other languages:

French, personal

Spanish

Portuguese

Chinese

Japanese

Vietnamese

In linguistics and

grammar, a pronoun (Lat:

pronomen) is a pro-form

that substitutes for a noun

(or noun phrase), such as,

in English, the words it

(substituting for the name

of a certain object) andhe

(substituting for the name

of a person). The replaced

noun is called the

antecedent of the

pronoun.

For example, consider the

sentence "Lisa gave the

coat to Phil." All three

nouns in the sentence can

be replaced by pronouns:

"She gave it to him." If the

coat, Lisa, and Phil have

been previously

mentioned, the listener

can deduce what the

pronounsshe, it and him

refer to and therefore

understand the meaning

of the sentence; however,

if the sentence "She gave

it to him." is the first

presentation of the idea,

none of the pronouns

have antecedents, and

each pronoun is therefore

ambiguous. Pronouns

without antecedents are

also called unprecursed

pronouns. English

grammar allows

pronouns to potentially

have multiple candidate

antecedents. The process

of determining which

antecedent was intended

is known asanaphore

resolution.

Types of pronouns

Common types of

pronouns found in the

world's languages are as

follows:

Personal pronouns

stand in place of the

names of people or

things:

Subjective

pronouns

are used when the

person or thing is

thesubject 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

for the reflexive

pronouns; for

example: I did it

myself (contrast

reflexive use, I

did it to myself).

Objective

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 forms for

both; for

example: Mary

loveshim (direct

object); Mary

senthim 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

athim.

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,

thepossessive

pronouns

are only those that

act syntactically as

nouns. English

example: Those

clothes aremine.

Often, though, the

term "possessive

pronoun" is also

applied to the so-

called

possessive

adjectives

(or possessive

determiners).

For example, in

English: I lostmy

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

ofadjectives,

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: Peoplewho

smoke should quit

now.

Indefinite

relative

pronounshave

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

knowwhat 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

knowwho that is.

(relative).

Pronouns and

determiners

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.

Pronoun

Determiner

Personal (1st/2nd)

we

we Scotsmen

Possessive

ours

our freedom

Demonstrative

this

this gentleman

Indefinite

some

some frogs

Interrogative

who

which option

The views of different

schools

Pronouns have been

included inparts of

speech since at least the

2nd Century BC where

they were included in Art

of Grammar. Strict

objections against this

approach have appeared

among grammatical

theories in the 20th

century. Their

grammatical

heterogeneity, many-

sided pronouns were

underlined, which were

classified as follows:

«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);

«represents»

(Ferdinand Brunot);

«survivals of special

part of speech» (Viktor

Vinogradov), etc.

"Azerbaijan Linguistic

School

" denies independence of

pronoun, it is not

considered to be an

independentpart of

speech, because relations

between pronouns and

otherparts of speech are

not equal and mutually

exclusive, since the

properties of pronouns

overlap with otherparts

of speech as a subset of

them. But this contradicts

the second law of "logic

division" (which reads:

"Members of division

should be mutually

exclusive, i.e. should not

overlap").

Dismemberment of all

majorparts of speech first

to general and particular

and then to abstract and

concrete types shows that

the place of abstract-and-

general form of each part

of speech is empty. The

conclusion is that this is a

pronoun which is

traditionally (by historical

inertia or under influence

authority of ancient

schools) separated from

the other parts of speech,

gathered in one class and

called a pronoun. On the

basis of this logic this

school considers it

appropriate to distribute

pronouns among other

parts of speech.

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