From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

A pronoun is traditionally called a part of speech in grammar (but many modern linguists, experts in linguistics, call it a special type of noun[1]) In English, pronouns are words such as me, she, his, them, herself, each other, it, what.

Pronouns are often used to take the place of a noun, when that noun is understood (has already been named), to avoid repeating it. For example, instead of saying


it is easier to say


When a pronoun replaces a noun, the noun is called the antecedent. But, there are times when the pronoun has no antecedent. This is because generally, the antecedent (what comes before) refers grammatically to the use of the relative pronoun in particular. For example, in the sentence: The dog that was walking down the street, the relative pronoun is the word that referring back to the antecedent, the word 'dog'. In the sentence The spy who loved me, the relative pronoun is the word 'who' and its antecedent is the word 'spy'.

Differences and similarities to nouns[change | edit source]

Pronouns are different from common nouns because they normally can not come after articles or other determiners. (For example, people do not say "the it".) Pronouns also rarely come after adjectives. They are also different because many of them change depending on how they are used. For example, "we" is a 'subject' in grammar, but the word changes to us when used as an object.


Kinds of pronouns[change | edit source]


Kinds of English pronouns
i personal you love them Your sister loves herself
ii reciprocal we like each other we are looking at one another
iii interrogative who is there? what happened?

Personal pronouns in English[change | edit source]


Personal pronouns in English
Singular Plural
Subject Object Possessive Subject Object Possessive
First I me mine we us ours
Second you you yours you you yours
Third Feminine she her hers they them theirs
Masculine he him his
Neuter it it its



References[change | edit source]

  1. Huddleston, R. & Pullum, G. K. (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.