One (pronoun)

''One'' is an English language, gender-neutral, indefinite pronoun that means, roughly, "a person". For purposes of verb agreement it is a third-person singular pronoun, though it sometimes appears with first- or second-person reference. It is sometimes called an impersonal pronoun. It is more or less equivalent to the Scots "a body", the French pronoun '' on'', the German/Scandinavian ''man'', and the Spanish ''uno''. It can take the possessive form ''one's'' and the reflexive form ''oneself'', or it can adopt those forms from the generic he with ''his'' and ''himself''.

The pronoun ''one'' often has connotations of formality, and is often avoided in favour of more colloquial alternatives such as generic ''you''.

Morphology

In Standard Modern English, pronoun ''one'' has three shapes representing five distinct word forms:

* ''one'': the nominative (subjective) and accusative (objective, also known as oblique case) forms
* ''one's:'' the dependent and independent genitive (possessive) forms
**Unlike the possessive forms of personal pronouns and ''who'' (''its'', ''hers'', ''whose,'' etc.), ''one's'' is written with the apostrophe.
* ''oneself'': the reflexive form

History

The word ''one'' developed from Old English , itself from Proto-Germanic , from PIE root ', but it was not originally a pronoun. Pronoun ''one'' may have come into use as an imitation of French beginning in the 15th century."One", entry in ''The Oxford English Dictionary'', second edition, edited by John Simpson and Edmund Weiner, Clarendon Press, 1989, twenty volumes, hardcover, . ''One's self'' appears in the mid 1500s, and is written as one word from about 1827.

Confusion with other categories

Pronoun vs pro-form

There is a pronoun ''one'', but there is also a noun and a determiner that are often called pronouns because they function as pro-forms. Pronoun is a category of words (a "part of speech"). A pro-form is a function of a word or phrase that stands in for (expresses the same content as) another, where the meaning is recoverable from the context. In English, pronouns mostly function as pro-forms, but there are pronouns that are not pro-forms and pro-forms that are not pronouns.

Examples & 2show pronouns and pro-forms. In the pronoun one "stands in" for "a / the person". In the relative pronoun ''who'' stands in for "the people".

Examples & 4show pronouns but not pro-forms. In the interrogative pronoun ''who'' does not stand in for anything. Similarly, in ''it'' is a dummy pronoun, one that does not stand in for anything. No other word can function there with the same meaning; we do not say "the sky is raining" or "the weather is raining".

Examples –7show pro-forms that are not pronouns. In ''did so'' is a verb phrase, but it stands in for "helped". Similarly, in ''others'' is a common noun, not a pronoun, but ''the others'' stands in for this list of names of the other people involved (e.g., ''Sho, Alana, and Ali''). And in ''one'' is a common noun. This should be clear because, unlike pronouns, it readily takes a determiner (''two'') and an adjective phrase modifier (''small''), and because its plural form is the usual ''-s'' of common nouns.

Example is a common noun. It's neither a pronoun nor a pro-form.

Syntax

Functions

''One'' can appear as a subject, object, determiner or predicative complement. The reflexive form also appears as an adjunct.

* Subject: ''One cannot help but grow older.'' ''One must pay for oneself to go.''
* Object: ''Drunkenness can make one unreliable''. ''A reputation travels with one. One must help oneself.''
* Predicative complement: ''One need only be oneself.''
* Dependent determiner: ''Being with one's friends is a joy.''
* Independent determiner: (no known examples)
** Such sentences as ''one's is broken''; ''I sat on one's''; ''I broke one's''; etc. are not found.
* Adjunct: ''One must do it oneself.''
* Modifier: (no known examples)

Dependents

Pronouns rarely take dependents, and ''one'' is particularly resistant in this respect, though it may have some of the same kind of dependents as other noun phrases.

* Relative clause modifier: ''one who knows oneself''
* Determiner: (no known examples)
** An example like the following has the common noun ''one'': ''Man has constructed woman as' the Other', as the one who is not oneself.'' The pronoun has no plural form, but the common noun example could be ''...as the ones who are not oneself''.
* Adjective phrase modifier: (no known examples)
* Adverb phrase external modifier: ''not even oneself''

Semantics

''One'' generally denotes any single unidentified person, or "any person at all, including (esp. in later use) the speaker himself or herself; ‘you, or I, or anyone’; a person in general." It is usually definite but non-specific,

Royal ''one''

Monarchs, people of higher classes, and particularly Queen Elizabeth II during her reign, are often depicted as using ''one'' as a first-person pronoun. This is frequently used as a caricature by the press when they refer to the Queen or senior members of the Royal Family. For example, the headline "One is not amused" is attributed humorously to her, implicitly referencing Queen Victoria's supposed statement "We are not amused," containing instead the royal ''we''. Another example near the end of 1992, which was a difficult year for the British royal family, as the Queen famously quipped " Annus horribilis", the tabloid newspaper ''The Sun'' published a headline, "One's Bum Year!"

Alternatives

For repeated ''one''

In formal English, once a sentence uses the indefinite pronoun ''one'', it must continue to use the same pronoun (or its supplementary forms ''one's'', ''oneself''). It is considered incorrect to replace it with another pronoun such as ''he'' or ''she''. For example:
*''One can glean from this whatever one may.''
*''If one were to look at oneself, one's impression would be...''

However, some speakers find this usage overly formal and stilted, and do replace repeated occurrences of ''one'' with a personal pronoun, most commonly the generic ''he'':
*''One can glean from this whatever he may.''
*''If one were to look at himself, his impression would be...''

Another reason for inserting a third-person pronoun in this way may sometimes be to underline that ''one'' is not intended to be understood as referring particularly to the listener or to the speaker. A problem with the generic ''he'', however, is that it may not be viewed as gender-neutral; this may sometimes be avoided by using singular ''they'' instead, though some purists view this as ungrammatical (particularly when the question arises of whether its reflexive form should be ''themselves'' or ''themself'').

Examples are also found, particularly in the spoken language, where a speaker switches mid-sentence from the use of ''one'' to the generic ''you'' (its informal equivalent, as described in the following section). This type of inconsistency is strongly criticized by language purists.Katie Wales, ''Personal Pronouns in Present-Day English'', CUP 1996, p. 81.

For ''one'' in general

A common and less formal alternative to the indefinite pronoun ''one'' is generic ''you'', used to mean not the listener specifically, but people in general.
*''One needs to provide food for oneself and one's family.'' (formal)
*''You need to provide food for yourself and your family.'' (informal if used with the meaning of the above sentence)

When excluding oneself, one can use the generic they:
*'' In Japan they work extremely hard, often sacrificing comfort for themselves and their families.''

Other techniques that can be used to avoid the use of ''one'', in contexts where it seems over-formal, include use of the passive voice, pluralizing the sentence (so as to talk about "people", for example), use of other indefinite pronouns such as ''someone'' or phrases like "a person" or "a man", and other forms of circumlocution.

Occasionally, the pronoun ''one'' as considered here may be avoided so as to avoid ambiguity with other uses of the word ''one''. For example, in the sentence ''If one enters two names, one will be rejected'', the second ''one'' may refer either to the person entering the names, or to one of the names.

See also

*
*
*
*
*

References

English words

{{DEFAULTSORT:One (Pronoun)
Modern English personal pronouns