From Encyclopedia Jr, free information reference for Kids
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun or noun phrase with or without a determiner, such as you and they in English. The replaced phrase is the antecedent of the pronoun. A pronoun used for the item questioned in a question is called an interrogative pronoun, such as who.
For example, consider the sentence "John gave the coat to Alice." All three nouns in the sentence can be replaced by pronouns to give: "He gave it to her." If the coat, John, and Alice have been previously mentioned, the listener can deduce what the pronouns he, it and her refer to and understand the meaning of the sentence.
[edit] Types of pronouns
Common types of pronouns found the world's languages include:
- personal pronouns:
- subjective pronouns:
- formal and informal "you" pronouns;
- inclusive and exclusive "we" pronouns;
- objective pronouns:
- direct and indirect object pronouns;
- reflexive pronouns;
- prepositional pronouns;
- disjunctive pronouns;
- possessive pronouns;
- demonstrative pronouns;
- indefinite pronouns;
- relative pronouns;
- interrogative pronouns.
[edit] Pronouns in English
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Main article: English personal pronouns
Ordinary English has seven personal pronouns: first-person singular (I), first-person plural (we), second-person (you), third-person singular masculine (he), third-person singular feminine (she), third-person singular neuter (it), and third-person plural (they). Each pronoun has a number of forms: a subjective case form (I/we/etc.), used when it's the subject of a finite verb; an objective case form (me/us/etc.), used when it's the object of verb or of a preposition; two possessive case forms (my/our/etc. and mine/ours/etc.), used when it's the possessor of another noun — one that's used as a determiner, and one that's used as a pronoun or a predicate adjective; and a reflexive form (myself/ourselves/etc.), which replaces the objective-case form in referring to the same entity as the subject. That said, the different pronouns, and the different forms of the pronouns, often have overlapping functions.
[edit] Pronouns in other languages
- Chinese pronouns
- Dutch grammar: pronouns
- Esperanto grammar: pronouns
- French grammar: pronouns
- German grammar: pronouns
- Ido pronouns
- Irish morphology: pronouns
- Italian grammar: pronouns
- Novial: pronouns
- Portuguese pronouns
- Spanish grammar: pronouns
- Vietnamese language: pronouns
[edit] See also
- Deixis
- Pro-form
- Pronoun game
- Morphosyntactic alignment