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, they). Personal pronouns may
also take different forms depending on number (usually singular or plural), grammatical or natural
gender, case, and formality. The term "personal" is used here purely to signify the grammatical sense;
personal pronouns are not limited to people and can also refer to animals and objects (as the English
personal pronoun it usually does)

For specific details of the personal pronouns used in the English language, see English personal
pronouns.

Types and forms

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Pronoun vs pro-form

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Pronoun is a category of words. 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.[1] Pronouns mostly function as pro-forms, but there are pronouns that
are not pro-forms and pro-forms that are not pronouns.

Languages typically have personal pronouns for each of the three grammatical persons:

first-person pronouns normally refer to the speaker, in the case of the singular (as the English I), or to
the speaker and others, in the case of the plural (as the English we).

second-person pronouns normally refer to the person or persons being addressed (as the English you);
in the plural they may also refer to the person or persons being addressed together with third parties.

third-person pronouns normally refer to third parties other than the speaker or the person being
addressed (as the English he, she, it, they).

As noted above, within each person there are often different forms for different grammatical numbers,
especially singular and plural. Languages which have other numbers, such as dual (e.g. Slovene),[3] may
also have distinct pronouns for these.
Some languages distinguish between inclusive and exclusive first-person plural pronouns – those that do
and do not include their audience. For example, Tok Pisin has seven first-person pronouns according to
number (singular, dual, trial, plural) and clusivity, such as mitripela ("they two and I") and yumitripela
("you two and I").[4]

Some languages do not have third-person personal pronouns, instead using demonstratives (e.g.
Macedonian)[5] or full noun phrases. Latin used demonstratives rather than third-person pronouns (in
fact the third-person pronouns in the Romance languages are descended from the Latin
demonstratives).

In some cases personal pronouns can be used in place of indefinite pronouns, referring to someone
unspecified or to people generally. In English and other languages the second-person pronoun can be
used in this way: instead of the formal one should hold one's oar in both hands (using the indefinite
pronoun one), it is more common to say you should hold your oar in both hands.

Gender

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"Gender pronoun" redirects here. For the term related to gender identity, see Preferred gender
pronoun.

Personal pronouns, particularly those of the third person, differ depending on the gender of their
antecedent or referent. This occurs in English with the third-person singular pronouns, where (simply
put) he is used when referring to a man, she to a woman, singular they to a person whose gender is
unknown or unspecified at the time that the pronoun is being used or to a person who does not identify
as either a man or a woman, and it to something inanimate or an animal of unspecific sex. This is an
example of pronoun selection based on natural gender; many languages also have selection based on
grammatical gender (as in French, where the pronouns il and elle are used with masculine and feminine
antecedents respectively, as are the plurals ils and elles). Sometimes natural and grammatical gender do
not coincide, as with the German noun Mädchen ("girl"), which is grammatically neuter but naturally
feminine. (See Grammatical gender § Grammatical vs. natural gender for more details.)

Issues may arise when the referent is someone of unspecified or unknown gender. In a language such as
English, it is derogatory to use the inanimate pronoun it to refer to a person (except in some cases to a
small child), and although it is traditional to use the masculine he to refer to a person of unspecified
gender, the movement towards gender-neutral language requires that another method be found, such
as saying he or she. A common solution, particularly in informal language, is to use singular they. For
more details see Gender in English.

Similar issues arise in some languages when referring to a group of mixed gender; these are dealt with
according to the conventions of the language in question (in French, for example, the masculine ils
"they" is used for a group containing both men and women or antecedents of both masculine and
feminine gender).

A pronoun can still carry gender even if it does not inflect for it; for example, in the French sentence je
suis petit ("I am small") the speaker is male and so the pronoun je is masculine, whereas in je suis petite
the speaker is female and the pronoun is treated as feminine, the feminine ending -e consequently
being added to the predicate adjective.

On the other hand, many languages do not distinguish female and male in the third person pronoun.

Some languages have or had a non-gender-specific third person pronoun:

Malay (including Indonesian and Malaysian standards), Malagasy of Madagascar, Philippine languages,
Māori, Rapa Nui, Hawaiian, and other Austronesian languages

Chinese, Burmese, and other Sino-Tibetan languages

Vietnamese and other Mon–Khmer languages

Igbo, Yoruba, and other Volta-Niger languages

Swahili, and other Bantu languages

Haitian Creole

Turkish and other Turkic languages

Luo and other Nilo-Saharan languages

Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, and other Uralic languages

Hindi-Urdu
Georgian

Japanese

Armenian

Korean

Mapudungun

Basque

Persian

Some of these languages started to distinguish gender in the third person pronoun due to influence
from European languages.

Mandarin, for example, introduced, in the early 20th century a different character for she (她), which is
pronounced identically as he (他) and thus is still indistinguishable in speech (tā).

Korean geunyeo (그녀) is found in writing to translate "she" from European languages. In the spoken
language it still sounds awkward and rather unnatural, as it literally translates to "that female".[citation
needed]

Formality

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Further information: T–V distinction and Pronoun avoidance

Many languages have different pronouns, particularly in the second person, depending on the degree of
formality or familiarity. It is common for different pronouns to be used when addressing friends, family,
children and animals than when addressing superiors and adults with whom the speaker is less familiar.
Examples of such languages include French, where the singular tu is used only for familiars, the plural
vous being used as a singular in other cases (Russian follows a similar pattern); German, where the third-
person plural sie (capitalized as Sie) is used as both singular and plural in the second person in non-
familiar uses; and Polish, where the noun pan ("gentleman") and its feminine and plural equivalents are
used as polite second-person pronouns. For more details, see T–V distinction.

Some languages, such as Japanese, Korean and many Southeast Asian languages like Vietnamese, Thai,
and Indonesian, have pronouns that reflect deep-seated societal categories. In these languages there is
generally a small set of nouns that refer to the discourse participants, but these referential nouns are
not usually used (pronoun avoidance), with proper nouns, deictics, and titles being used instead (and
once the topic is understood, usually no explicit reference is made at all). A speaker chooses which word
to use depending on the rank, job, age, gender, etc. of the speaker and the addressee. For instance, in
Japanese, in formal situations, adults usually refer to themselves as watashi or the even more polite
watakushi, while young men may use the student-like boku and police officers may use honkan ("this
officer"). In informal situations, women may use the colloquial atashi, and men may use the rougher ore.

Case

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Pronouns also often take different forms based on their syntactic function, and in particular on their
grammatical case. English distinguishes the nominative form (I, you, he, she, it, we, they), used
principally as the subject of a verb, from the oblique form (me, you, him, her, it, us, them), used
principally as the object of a verb or preposition. Languages whose nouns inflect for case often inflect
their pronouns according to the same case system; for example, German personal pronouns have
distinct nominative, genitive, dative and accusative forms (ich, meiner, mir, mich; etc.). Pronouns often
retain more case distinctions than nouns – this is true of both German and English, and also of the
Romance languages, which (with the exception of Romanian) have lost the Latin grammatical case for
nouns, but preserve certain distinctions in the personal pronouns.

Other syntactic types of pronouns which may adopt distinct forms are disjunctive pronouns, used in
isolation and in certain distinct positions (such as after a conjunction like and), and prepositional
pronouns, used as the complement of a preposition.

Strong and weak forms

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Some languages have strong and weak forms of personal pronouns, the former being used in positions
with greater stress. Some authors further distinguish weak pronouns from clitic pronouns, which are
phonetically less independent.[6][7]

Examples are found in Polish, where the masculine third-person singular accusative and dative forms are
jego and jemu (strong) and go and mu (weak). English has strong and weak pronunciations for some
pronouns, such as them (pronounced /ðɛm/ when strong, but /ðəm/, /ɛm/, /əm/ or even /m̩ / when
weak).
Free vs. bound pronouns

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Some languages—for instance, most Australian Aboriginal languages—have distinct classes of free and
bound pronouns. These are distinguished by their morphological independence/dependence on other
words respectively. In Australian languages, it is common for free pronouns to be reserved exclusively
for human (and sometimes other animate) referents.[8] Examples of languages with animacy
restrictions on free pronouns include Wanyjirra,[9] Bilinarra,[10] Warrongo,[11] Guugu Yimidhirr[12]
and many others. Bound pronouns can take a variety of forms, including verbal prefixes (these are
usually subject markers—see Bardi[13]—but can mark objects as well—see Guniyandi[14]), verbal
enclitics (including possessive markers) and auxiliary morphemes. These various forms are exemplified
below:

Free pronoun (Wangkatja[15])

Nyimu-lu

dog-erg

palu-nya

3-abs

patjar-nu

bite-pst

'The dog bit it'

Verb prefix (Bardi[13])

3-

ng-

pst-

jalgoo

fall

-ij

-pfv

'he/she/it fell.'

Enclitic (Ngiyambaa[16])

ngunhi=lu=na

gave=3.erg=3.abs

ngadhi
1sg.obl

'He gave it to me'

Auxiliary morpheme (Wambaya[17])

ya-ni

go-npst

ka-lu

prs-3pl.S

'They go/they are going.'

Possessive clitic (Ngaanyatjarra[18])

Kuka-tju

meat-1sg

mantjila

get

purnpurntu-tju
fly-erg

purrururruritjunku-tjaku

blow.it-lest

Get my meat so that the flies won't blow it

Reflexive and possessive forms

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Languages may also have reflexive pronouns (and sometimes reciprocal pronouns) closely linked to the
personal pronouns. English has the reflexive forms myself, yourself, himself, herself, themself, theirself,
itself, ourselves, yourselves, theirselves, themselves (there is also oneself, from the indefinite pronoun
one). These are used mainly to replace the oblique form when referring to the same entity as the
subject of the clause; they are also used as intensive pronoun (as in I did it myself).

Personal pronouns are also often associated with possessive forms. English has two sets of such forms:
the possessive determiners (also called possessive adjectives) my, your, his, her, its, our and their, and
the possessive pronouns mine, yours, his, hers, its (rare), ours, theirs (for more details see English
possessive). In informal usage both types of words may be called "possessive pronouns", even though
the former kind do not function in place of nouns, but qualify a noun, and thus do not themselves
function grammatically as pronouns.

Some languages, such as the Slavic languages, also have reflexive possessives (meaning "my own", "his
own", etc.). These can be used to make a distinction from ordinary third-person possessives. For
example, in Slovene:

Eva je dala Maji svojo knjigo ("Eva gave Maja her [reflexive] book", i.e. Eva's own book)

Eva je dala Maji njeno knjigo ("Eva gave Maja her [non-reflexive] book", i.e. Maja's book)
The same phenomenon occurs in the North Germanic languages, for example Danish, which can
produce the sentences Anna gav Maria sin bog and Anna gav Maria hendes bog, the distinction being
analogous to that in the Slovene example above.

Syntax

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Antecedents

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Third-person personal pronouns, and sometimes others, often have an explicit antecedent – a noun
phrase which refers to the same person or thing as the pronoun (see anaphora). The antecedent usually
precedes the pronoun, either in the same sentence or in a previous sentence (although in some cases
the pronoun may come before the antecedent). The pronoun may then be said to "replace" or "stand
for" the antecedent, and to be used so as to avoid repeating the antecedent. Some examples:

John hid and we couldn't find him. (John is the antecedent of him)

After he lost his job, my father set up a small grocer's shop. (my father is the antecedent of he, although
it comes after the pronoun)

We invited Mary and Tom. He came but she didn't. (Mary is the antecedent of she, and Tom of he)

I loved those bright orange socks. Can you lend them to me? (those bright orange socks is the
antecedent of them)

Jane and I went out cycling yesterday. We did 30 miles. (Jane and I is the antecedent of we)

Sometimes pronouns, even third-person ones, are used without specific antecedent, and the referent
has to be deduced from the context. In other cases there may be ambiguity as to what the intended
antecedent is:

Alan was going to discuss it with Bob. He's always dependable. (the meaning of he is ambiguous; the
intended antecedent may be either Alan or Bob)

Pronoun dropping

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In some languages, subject or object pronouns can be dropped in certain situations (see Pro-drop
language). In particular, in a null-subject language, it is permissible for the subject of a verb to be
omitted. Information about the grammatical person (and possibly gender) of the subject may then be
provided by the form of the verb. In such languages it is common for personal pronouns to appear in
subject position only if they are needed to resolve ambiguity or if they are stressed.

Dummy pronouns

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In some cases pronouns are used purely because they are required by the rules of syntax, even though
they do not refer to anything; they are then called dummy pronouns. This can be seen in English with
the pronoun it in such sentences as it is raining and it is nice to relax. (This is less likely in pro-drop
languages, since such pronouns would probably be omitted.)

Capitalization

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Examples

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He shook her* hand.

Why do you always rely on me to do your* homework for you?

They tried to run away from the hunter, but he set his* dogs after them.

*Words like her, your and his are sometimes called (possessive) pronouns; other terms are possessive
determiner or possessive adjective.

See also

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References

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Further reading

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Last edited 2 months ago by That'sHedley

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Pronoun

Word that substitutes for a noun or noun phrase

English personal pronouns

Closed lexical category of the English language

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