linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

, a subject pronoun is a

personal pronoun Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as ''I''), second person (as ''you''), or third person (as ''he'', ''she'', ''it''). Personal pronouns may also take different f ...

that is used as the subject of a verb. Subject pronouns are usually in the

nominative case In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case, or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb, or (in Latin and formal variants ...

for languages with a nominative–accusative alignment pattern. On the other hand, a language with an ergative-absolutive pattern usually has separate subject pronouns for transitive and intransitive verbs: an ergative case pronoun for transitive verbs and an absolutive case pronoun for intransitive verbs. In English, the commonly used subject pronouns are ''I'', '' you'', '' he'', '' she'', ''it'', '' one'', '' we'', ''

they In Modern English, ''they'' is a third-person pronoun relating to a grammatical subject. Morphology In Standard Modern English, ''they'' has five distinct word forms: * ''they'': the nominative (subjective) form * ''them'': the accus ...

'', ''who'' and ''

what What or WHAT may refer to: * What, an English interrogative word * "What?", one of the Five Ws used in journalism Film and television * ''What!'' (film), also known as ''The Whip and the Body'', a 1963 Italian film directed by Mario Bava * ...

''. With the exception of ''you'', ''it'', ''one'' and ''what'', and in informal speech ''who'', Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik, ''A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language'' (London: Longman, 1985), pp. 367 and 370. the

object pronoun In linguistics, an object pronoun is a personal pronoun that is used typically as a grammatical object: the direct or indirect object of a verb, or the object of a preposition. Object pronouns contrast with subject pronouns. Object pronouns in En ...

s are different: i.e. ''me,'' ''him,'' ''her,'' ''us,'' ''them'' and ''whom'' (see

English personal pronouns The English personal pronouns are a subset of English pronouns taking various forms according to grammatical number, number, grammatical person, person, grammatical case, case and grammatical gender. Modern English has very little inflection of n ...

). In some cases, the subject pronoun is not used for the logical subject. For example, exceptional case marking (ECM) constructions involve the subject of a non-finite clause which appears in the object form (e.g., ''I want him to go''.) In colloquial speech, a coordinated first person subject will often appear in the object form even in subject position (e.g., ''Me and James went to the store''.) This is corrected so often that it has led to cases of

hypercorrection In sociolinguistics, hypercorrection is the nonstandard use of language that results from the overapplication of a perceived rule of language-usage prescription. A speaker or writer who produces a hypercorrection generally believes through a ...

, where the subject pronoun is used even in object position under coordination (e.g., ''Marie gave Susana and I a piece of cake.)

References

Personal pronouns {{ling-morph-stub

See also

References