HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

In
linguistics Linguistics is the science, scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure ...
and
grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domain ...
, a pronoun (
abbreviated An abbreviation (from Latin ''brevis'', meaning ''short'') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word ''abbrevia ...
) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a
noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, ...
or
noun phrase In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently oc ...
. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not consider them to form a single class, in view of the variety of functions they perform cross-linguistically. An example of a pronoun is "you", which can be either singular or plural. Subtypes include
personal Personal may refer to: Aspects of persons' respective individualities * Privacy * Personality * Personal, personal advertisement, variety of classified advertisement used to find romance or friendship Companies * Personal, Inc., a Washington, ...
and possessive pronouns, reflexive and reciprocal pronouns,
demonstrative pronoun Demonstratives ( abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular fram ...
s, relative and
interrogative pronoun An interrogative word or question word is a function word used to ask a question, such as ''what, which'', ''when'', ''where'', '' who, whom, whose'', ''why'', ''whether'' and ''how''. They are sometimes called wh-words, because in English most o ...
s, and indefinite pronouns. The use of pronouns often involves anaphora, where the meaning of the pronoun is dependent on an antecedent. For example, in the sentence ''That poor man looks as if he needs a new coat'', the meaning of the pronoun ''he'' is dependent on its antecedent, ''that poor man''. The name of the
adjective In linguistics, an adjective (abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ma ...
that belongs with a "pronoun" is called a "pronominal". A pronominal is also a word or phrase that acts as a pronoun. For example, in ''That's not the one I wanted'', the phrase ''the one'' (containing the prop-word ''one'') is a pronominal.


Theory


Pronoun versus pro-form

Pronoun is a category of words. A
pro-form In linguistics, a pro-form is a type of function word or expression that stands in for (expresses the same content as) another word, phrase, clause or sentence where the meaning is recoverable from the context. They are used either to avoid rep ...
is a type of function word or expression that stands in for (expresses the same content as) another
word A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no conse ...
,
phrase In syntax and grammar, a phrase is a group of words or singular word acting as a grammatical unit. For instance, the English expression "the very happy squirrel" is a noun phrase which contains the adjective phrase "very happy". Phrases can consi ...
, clause or sentence 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. . 239/sup> Examples & 2are pronouns and pro-forms. In the pronoun '' it'' "stands in" for whatever was mentioned and is a good idea. In the
relative pronoun A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause. It serves the purpose of conjoining modifying information about an antecedent referent. An example is the word ''which'' in the sentence "This is the house which Jack built." Here the r ...
''
who Who or WHO may refer to: * Who (pronoun), an interrogative or relative pronoun * Who?, one of the Five Ws in journalism * World Health Organization Arts and entertainment Fictional characters * Who, a creature in the Dr. Seuss book '' Horton He ...
'' stands in for "the people". Examples & 4are pronouns but not pro-forms. In the
interrogative pronoun An interrogative word or question word is a function word used to ask a question, such as ''what, which'', ''when'', ''where'', '' who, whom, whose'', ''why'', ''whether'' and ''how''. They are sometimes called wh-words, because in English most o ...
''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". Finally, in & 6 there are pro-forms that are not pronouns. In ''did so'' is a verb phrase that stands in for "helped", inflected from ''to help'' stated earlier in the sentence. Similarly, in ''others'' is a
common noun A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (''Africa'', ''Jupiter'', ''Sarah'', ''Microsoft)'' as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (''continent, ...
, not a pronoun, but ''the others'' probably stands in for the names of other people involved (e.g., ''Sho, Alana, and Ali''), all
proper nouns A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (''Africa'', ''Jupiter'', ''Sarah'', ''Microsoft)'' as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (''continent, ...
.


Grammar

Pronouns () are listed as one of eight parts of speech in '' The Art of Grammar'', a treatise on Greek grammar attributed to Dionysius Thrax and dating from the 2nd century BC. The pronoun is described there as "a part of speech substitutable for a noun and marked for a person." Pronouns continued to be regarded as a part of speech in
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
grammar (the Latin term being , from which the English name – through Middle French – ultimately derives), and thus in the European tradition generally. Because of the many different syntactic roles that they play, pronouns are less likely to be a single
word class In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech ( abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are ass ...
in more modern approaches to grammar.


Linguistics

Linguists in particular have trouble classifying pronouns in a single category, and some do not agree that pronouns substitute nouns or noun categories. Certain types of pronouns are often identical or similar in form to determiners with related meaning; some English examples are given in the table. This observation has led some linguists, such as Paul Postal, to regard pronouns as determiners that have had their following noun or noun phrase deleted. (Such patterning can even be claimed for certain personal pronouns; for example, ''we'' and ''you'' might be analyzed as determiners in phrases like ''we Brits'' and ''you tennis players''.) Other linguists have taken a similar view, uniting pronouns and determiners into a single class, sometimes called "determiner-pronoun", or regarding determiners as a subclass of pronouns or vice versa. The distinction may be considered to be one of
subcategorization In linguistics, subcategorization denotes the ability/necessity for lexical items (usually verbs) to require/allow the presence and types of the syntactic arguments with which they co-occur. The notion of subcategorization is similar to the notio ...
or valency, rather like the distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs – determiners take a noun phrase
complement A complement is something that completes something else. Complement may refer specifically to: The arts * Complement (music), an interval that, when added to another, spans an octave ** Aggregate complementation, the separation of pitch-clas ...
like transitive verbs do, while pronouns do not. This is consistent with the determiner phrase viewpoint, whereby a determiner, rather than the noun that follows it, is taken to be the head of the phrase. Cross-linguistically, it seems as though pronouns share 3 distinct categories: point of view, person, and number. The breadth of each subcategory however tends to differ among languages.


Binding theory and antecedents

The use of pronouns often involves anaphora, where the meaning of the pronoun is dependent on another referential element. 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. The grammatical behavior of certain types of pronouns, and in particular their possible relationship with their antecedents, has been the focus of studies in binding, notably in the Chomskyan
government and binding theory A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is a ...
. In this binding context, reflexive and reciprocal pronouns in English (such as ''himself'' and ''each other'') are referred to as
anaphor In linguistics, anaphora () is the use of an expression whose interpretation depends upon another expression in context (its antecedent or postcedent). In a narrower sense, anaphora is the use of an expression that depends specifically upon an a ...
s (in a specialized restricted sense) rather than as pronominal elements. Under binding theory, specific principles apply to different sets of pronouns. In English, reflexive and reciprocal pronouns must adhere to Principle A: an anaphor (reflexive or reciprocal, such as "each other") must be bound in its governing category (roughly, the clause). Therefore, in syntactic structure it must be lower in structure (it must have an antecedent) and have a direct relationship with its referent. This is called a
C-command In generative grammar and related frameworks, a node in a parse tree c-commands its sister node and all of its sister's descendants. In these frameworks, c-command plays a central role in defining and constraining operations such as syntactic movem ...
relationship. For instance, we see that ''John cut himself'' is grammatical, but ''Himself cut John'' is not, despite having identical arguments, since ''himself'', the reflexive, must be lower in structure to John, its referent. Additionally, we see examples like ''John said that Mary cut himself'' are not grammatical because there is an intermediary noun, ''Mary'', that disallows the two referents from having a direct relationship. On the other hand, personal pronouns (such as ''him'' or ''them'') must adhere to Principle B: a pronoun must be free (i.e., not bound) within its governing category (roughly, the clause). This means that although the pronouns can have a referent, they cannot have a direct relationship with the referent where the referent selects the pronoun. For instance, ''John said Mary cut him'' is grammatical because the two co-referents, ''John'' and ''him'' are separated structurally by ''Mary''. This is why a sentence like ''John cut him'' where ''him'' refers to ''John'' is ungrammatical.


= Binding cross-linguistically

= The type of binding that applies to subsets of pronouns varies cross-linguistically. For instance, in German linguistics, pronouns can be split into two distinct categories — personal pronouns and d-pronouns. Although personal pronouns act identically to English personal pronouns (i.e. follow Principle B), d-pronouns follow yet another principle, Principle C, and function similarly to nouns in that they cannot have a direct relationship to an antecedent.


= Antecedents

= The following sentences give examples of particular types of pronouns used with antecedents: *Third-person personal pronouns: **''That poor man looks as if he needs a new coat.'' (the noun phrase ''that poor man'' is the antecedent of ''he'') **''Julia arrived yesterday. I met her at the station.'' (''Julia'' is the antecedent of ''her'') **''When they saw us, the lions began roaring'' (''the lions'' is the antecedent of ''they''; as it comes after the pronoun it may be called a ''postcedent'') *Other personal pronouns in some circumstances: **''Terry and I were hoping no one would find us.'' (''Terry and I'' is the antecedent of ''us'') **''You and Alice can come if you like.'' (''you and Alice'' is the antecedent of the second – plural – ''you'') *Reflexive and reciprocal pronouns: **''Jack hurt himself.'' (''Jack'' is the antecedent of ''himself'') **''We were teasing each other.'' (''we'' is the antecedent of ''each other'') *Relative pronouns: **''The woman who looked at you is my sister.'' (''the woman'' is the antecedent of ''who'') Some other types, such as indefinite pronouns, are usually used without antecedents. Relative pronouns are used without antecedents in free relative clauses. Even third-person personal pronouns are sometimes used without antecedents ("unprecursed") – this applies to special uses such as dummy pronouns and generic ''they'', as well as cases where the referent is implied by the context.


English pronouns

English personal pronouns have a number of different syntactic contexts (Subject, Object, Possessive, Reflexive) and many features: * person (1st, 2nd, 3rd); * number (singular, plural); * gender (masculine, feminine, neuter or inanimate, epicene) English also has other pronoun types, including demonstrative, relative, indefinite, and interrogative pronouns:


Personal and possessive


Personal

Personal pronouns may be classified by person,
number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
, gender and case. English has three persons (first, second and third) and two numbers (singular and plural); in the third person singular there are also distinct pronoun forms for male, female and neuter gender. Principal forms are shown in the adjacent table. English personal pronouns have two cases, ''subject'' and ''object''. Subject pronouns are used in subject position (''I like to eat chips, but she does not''). Object pronouns are used for the object of a verb or preposition (''John likes me but not her''). Other distinct forms found in some languages include: * Second person informal and formal pronouns (the T–V distinction), like ''tu'' and ''vous'' in French. Formal second person pronouns can also signify plurality in many languages. There is no such distinction in standard modern English, though Elizabethan English marked the distinction with ''
thou The word ''thou'' is a second-person singular pronoun in English. It is now largely archaic, having been replaced in most contexts by the word '' you'', although it remains in use in parts of Northern England and in Scots (). ''Thou'' is the ...
'' (singular informal) and ''you'' (plural or singular formal). Some dialects of English have developed informal plural second person pronouns, for instance, ''y'all'' ( Southern American English) and ''you guys'' (
American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and in most circumstances i ...
). * Inclusive and exclusive first person plural pronouns, which indicate whether or not the audience is included, that is, whether ''we'' means "you and I" or "they and I". There is no such distinction in English. * Intensive (emphatic) pronouns, which 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''). *Direct and indirect object pronouns, such as ''le'' and ''lui'' in French. English uses the same form for both; for example: ''Mary loves him'' (direct object); ''Mary sent him a letter'' (indirect object). * Prepositional pronouns, used after a preposition. English uses ordinary object pronouns here: ''Mary looked at him''. * Disjunctive pronouns, used in isolation or in certain other special grammatical contexts, like ''moi'' in French. No distinct forms exist in English; for example: ''Who does this belong to? Me.'' * Strong and weak forms of certain pronouns, found in some languages such as Polish. * Pronoun avoidance, where personal pronouns are substituted by titles or kinship terms (particularly common in South-East Asia).


Possessive

Possessive pronouns are used to indicate possession (in a broad sense). Some occur as independent noun phrases: ''mine'', ''yours'', ''hers'', ''ours'', ''theirs''. An example is: ''Those clothes are mine.'' Others act as a determiner and must accompany a noun: ''my'', ''your'', ''her'', ''our'', ''your'', ''their'', as in: ''I lost my wallet.'' (''His'' and ''its'' can fall into either category, although ''its'' is nearly always found in the second.) Those of the second type have traditionally also been described as possessive
adjective In linguistics, an adjective (abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ma ...
s, and in more modern terminology as possessive determiners. The term "possessive pronoun" is sometimes restricted to the first type. Both types replace possessive noun phrases. As an example, ''Their crusade to capture our attention'' could replace ''The advertisers' crusade to capture our attention.''


Reflexive and reciprocal

Reflexive pronouns are used when a person or thing acts on itself, for example, ''John cut himself.'' In English they all end in ''-self'' or ''-selves'' and must refer to a noun phrase elsewhere in the same clause. Reciprocal pronouns refer to a reciprocal relationship (''each other'', ''one another''). They must refer to a noun phrase in the same clause. An example in English is: ''They do not like each other.'' In some languages, the same forms can be used as both reflexive and reciprocal pronouns.


Demonstrative

Demonstrative pronouns (in English, ''this'', ''that'' and their plurals ''these'', ''those'') often distinguish their targets by pointing or some other indication of position; for example, ''I'll take these.'' They may also be '' anaphoric'', depending on an earlier expression for context, for example, ''A kid actor would try to be all sweet, and who needs that?''


Indefinite

Indefinite pronouns, the largest group of pronouns, refer to one or more unspecified persons or things. One group in English includes compounds of ''some-'', ''any-'', ''every-'' and ''no-'' with ''-thing'', ''-one'' and ''-body'', for example: ''Anyone can do that.'' Another group, including ''many'', ''more'', ''both'', and ''most'', can appear alone or followed by ''of''. In addition, * Distributive pronouns are used to refer to members of a group separately rather than collectively. (''To each his own.'') * Negative pronouns indicate the non-existence of people or things. (''Nobody thinks that.'') * Impersonal pronouns normally refer to a person but are not specific as to first, second or third person in the way that the personal pronouns are. (''One does not clean one's own windows.'')


Relative and interrogative


Relative

Relative pronouns in English include ''who'', ''whom'', ''whose'', ''what'', ''which'' and ''that''. They rely on an antecedent, and refer back to people or things previously mentioned: ''People who smoke should quit now.'' They are used in relative clauses. Relative pronouns can also be used as
complementizer In linguistics (especially generative grammar), complementizer or complementiser (glossing abbreviation: ) is a functional category (part of speech) that includes those words that can be used to turn a clause into the subject or object of a se ...
s.


Interrogative

Relative pronouns can be used in an interrogative setting as interrogative pronouns. Interrogative pronouns ask which person or thing is meant. In reference to a person, one may use ''who'' (subject), ''whom'' (object) or ''whose'' (possessive); for example, ''Who did that?'' In colloquial speech, '' whom'' is generally replaced by ''who''. English non-personal interrogative pronouns (''which'' and ''what'') have only one form. In English and many other languages (e.g. French and
Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus' Places * Czech, ...
), the sets of relative and interrogative pronouns are nearly identical. Compare English: ''Who is that?'' (interrogative) and ''I know the woman who came'' (relative). In some other languages, interrogative pronouns and indefinite pronouns are frequently identical; for example, Standard Chinese means "what?" as well as "something" or "anything".


Archaic forms

Though the personal pronouns described above are the current English pronouns,
Early Modern English Early Modern English or Early New English (sometimes abbreviated EModE, EMnE, or ENE) is the stage of the English language from the beginning of the Tudor period to the English Interregnum and Restoration, or from the transition from Middle E ...
(as used by Shakespeare, for example) use a slightly different set of personal pronouns, shown in the table. The difference is entirely in the second person. Though one would rarely find these older forms used in recent literature, they are nevertheless considered part of Modern English.


Kinship

In English, kin terms like "mother," "uncle," "cousin" are a distinct word class from pronouns; however many Australian Aboriginal languages have more elaborated systems of encoding kinship in language including special kin forms of pronouns. In Murrinh-patha, for example, when selecting a nonsingular exclusive pronoun to refer to a group, the speaker will assess whether or not the members of the group belong to a common class of gender or kinship. If all of the members of the referent group are male, the MASCULINE form will be selected; if at least one is female, the FEMININE is selected, but if all the members are in a sibling-like kinship relation, a third SIBLING form is selected. In Arabana-Wangkangurru, the speaker will use entirely different sets of pronouns depending on whether the speaker and the referent are or are not in a common moiety. See the following example: See
Australian Aboriginal kinship Aboriginal Australian kinship comprises the systems of Aboriginal customary law governing social interaction relating to kinship in traditional Aboriginal cultures. It is an integral part of the culture of every Aboriginal group across Aust ...
for more details.


Special uses

Some special uses of personal pronouns include: * Generic ''you'', where second person pronouns are used in an indefinite sense: ''You can't buy good old-fashioned bulbs these days.'' * Generic ''they'': ''In China they drive on the right.'' * Gender non-specific uses, where a pronoun refers to a non-specific person or a person whose gender is not specified: English usage and acceptance varies (and has varied) regarding generic ''he'' and singular ''they'', among others. **A closely related usage is the singular ''they'' to refer to a person whose gender is specified as
non-binary Non-binary and genderqueer are umbrella terms for gender identities that are not solely male or femaleidentities that are outside the gender binary. Non-binary identities fall under the transgender umbrella, since non-binary people typically ...
, genderqueer, or other, which has gained popularity in LGBTQ+ culture in particular. *Vernacular usage of "yo" as a gender neutral pronoun has also been recorded among school students in Baltimore. *
Preferred gender pronoun Preferred gender pronouns or personal gender pronouns (often abbreviated as PGP) are the set of pronouns (in English, third-person pronouns) that an individual wants others to use in order to reflect that person's gender identity. In English, whe ...
selected to reflect gender identity * Dummy pronouns (expletive pronouns), used to satisfy a grammatical requirement for a noun or pronoun, but contributing nothing to its meaning: ''It is raining.'' *
Royal we The royal ''we'', majestic plural (), or royal plural, is the use of a plural pronoun (or corresponding plural-inflected verb forms) used by a single person who is a monarch or holds a high office to refer to themselves. A more general term fo ...
, used to refer to a single person who is a
monarch A monarch is a head of stateWebster's II New College DictionarMonarch Houghton Mifflin. Boston. 2001. p. 707. for life or until abdication, and therefore the head of state of a monarchy. A monarch may exercise the highest authority and power i ...
: ''We are not amused.'' * Nosism: The use of the pronoun we to refer to oneself. * Resumptive pronouns, "intrusive" personal pronouns found (for example) in some relative clauses where a gap ( trace) might be expected: ''This is the girl that I don't know what she said.''


See also


Related topics

*
Anaphora (linguistics) In linguistics, anaphora () is the use of an expression whose interpretation depends upon another expression in context (its antecedent or postcedent). In a narrower sense, anaphora is the use of an expression that depends specifically upon an ...
*
Cataphora In linguistics, cataphora (; from Greek, '' καταφορά'', ''kataphora'', "a downward motion" from '' κατά'', ''kata'', "downwards" and '' φέρω'', ''pherō'', "I carry") is the use of an expression or word that co-refers with a later, ...
*
Clusivity In linguistics, clusivity is a grammatical distinction between ''inclusive'' and ''exclusive'' first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called ''inclusive " we"'' and ''exclusive "we"''. Inclusive "we" specifically includes the addressee ...
*
Gender-specific and gender-neutral pronouns A third-person pronoun is a pronoun that refers to an entity other than the speaker or listener. Some languages with gender-specific pronouns have them as part of a grammatical gender system, a system of agreement where most or all nouns have a va ...
*
Generic antecedents Generic antecedents are representatives of classes, referred to in ordinary language by another word (most often a pronoun), in a situation in which gender is typically unknown or irrelevant. These mostly arise in generalizations and are particul ...
* Deixis * Inalienable possession * Indefinite pronoun *
Logophoric pronoun Logophoricity is a phenomenon of binding relation that may employ a morphologically different set of anaphoric forms, in the context where the referent is an entity whose speech, thoughts, or feelings are being reported. This entity may or may ...
* Neopronouns * Phi features *
Pro-form In linguistics, a pro-form is a type of function word or expression that stands in for (expresses the same content as) another word, phrase, clause or sentence where the meaning is recoverable from the context. They are used either to avoid rep ...
*
Pronoun game "Playing the pronoun game" is the act of concealing sexual orientation in conversation by not using a gender-specific pronoun for a partner or a lover, which would reveal the sexual orientation of the person speaking. Someone may employ the prono ...
*
Reciprocal pronoun A reciprocal pronoun is a pronoun that indicates a reciprocal relationship. A reciprocal pronoun can be used for one of the participants of a reciprocal construction, i.e. a clause in which two participants are in a mutual relationship. The recip ...
*
Reflexive pronoun A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that refers to another noun or pronoun (its antecedent) within the same sentence. In the English language specifically, a reflexive pronoun will end in ''-self'' or ''-selves'', and refer to a previously n ...


In English

* Old English pronouns


In other languages

*
Bulgarian pronouns Bulgarian language, Bulgarian pronouns change according to Grammatical gender, gender, Grammatical number, number, definiteness and Grammatical case, case. Pronouns are classified as: personal, possessive, interrogative, demonstrative, reflexive, un ...
*
Cantonese pronouns Pronouns in Cantonese are less numerous than their Indo-European languages counterparts. Cantonese uses pronouns that apply the same meaning to function as both subjective (English: I, he, we) and objective (me, him, us) just like many other Sin ...
* Chinese pronouns * Dutch grammar: Pronouns and determiners * Esperanto grammar: Pronouns *
French pronouns French pronouns are inflected to indicate their role in the sentence ( subject, direct object, and so on), as well as to reflect the person, gender, and number of their referents. Personal pronouns French has a complex system of personal pronoun ...
*
German pronouns German pronouns are German words that function as pronouns. As with pronouns in other languages, they are frequently employed as the subject or object of a clause, acting as substitutes for nouns or noun phrases, but are also used in relative ...
* 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 In general, a Vietnamese pronoun ( vi, đại từ nhân xưng, translation=person-calling pronoun, or ) can serve as a noun phrase. In Vietnamese, a pronoun usually connotes a degree of family relationship or kinship. In polite speech, the aspect ...
* Yoruba pronouns *
Georgian pronouns Georgian may refer to: Common meanings * Anything related to, or originating from Georgia (country) **Georgians, an indigenous Caucasian ethnic group **Georgian language, a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians **Georgian scripts, three scripts ...


Notes


References


Further reading

* * *


External links


English pronouns exercises
by Jennifer Frost * {{Authority control Parts of speech