Part of a series on |
English grammar |
---|
![]() |
The English personal pronouns are a subset of English pronouns taking various forms according to number, person, case and grammatical gender. Modern English has very little inflection of nouns or adjectives, to the point where some authors describe it as an analytic language, but the Modern English system of personal pronouns has preserved some of the inflectional complexity of Old English and Middle English.
Unlike nouns which are not inflected for case except for possession (woman/woman's), [lower-alpha 1] English personal pronouns have a number of forms, which are named according to their typical grammatical role in a sentence: [lower-alpha 2]
Possessive pronouns (mine, ours, etc.) replace the entity that was referred to previously (as in I prefer mine) or serve as predicate adjectives (as in this book is mine). For details see English possessive. As they are pronouns they cannot precede any noun.
The basic personal pronouns of modern English are shown in the table below.
Person (gender) | Subject | Object | Dependent possessive (determiner) | Independent possessive | Reflexive | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Singular | ||||||
First | I | me | my | mine | myself | |
Second | you | your | yours | yourself | ||
Second (poetic/dialect) | thou | thee | thy | thine | thyself | |
Third | Masculine | he | him | his | himself | |
Feminine | she | her | hers | herself | ||
Neuter | it | its | itself | |||
Epicene | they | them | their | theirs | themself | |
Plural | ||||||
First | we | us | our | ours | ourselves | |
Second | you | your | yours | yourselves | ||
Third | they | them | their | theirs | themselves |
Other English pronouns which have distinct forms of the above types are the indefinite pronoun one , which has the reflexive oneself (the possessive form is written one's, like a regular English possessive); and the interrogative and relative pronoun who , which has the objective form whom (now confined mostly to formal English) and the possessive whose (which in its relative use can also serve as the possessive for which).
Note that singular they is morphosyntactically plural: it is used with a plural verb form, as in "they laugh" or "they are". See the singular they section for more information.
This section needs additional citations for verification .(July 2024) |
Apart from the standard forms given above, English also has a number of non-standard, informal and archaic forms of personal pronouns.
Person (gender) | Subject | Object | Dependent possessive (determiner) | Independent possessive | Reflexive | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Singular | ||||||
Second | thou | thee | thy | thine | thyself |
A more complete table, including the standard forms and some of the above forms, is given below. Nonstandard, informal and archaic forms are in italics.
Subject | Object | Dependent possessive | Independent possessive | Reflexive | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
First-person | Singular | I | me | my mine (before vowel) me (esp. BrE) | mine | myself | |
Plural | we | us | our | ours | ourselves ourself | ||
Second-person | Singular | Standard (archaic plural and later formal) | you [lower-roman 1] | your [lower-roman 1] | yours | yourself [lower-roman 1] | |
Archaic informal | thou | thee | thy thine (before vowel) | thine | thyself | ||
Plural | Standard | you | your | yours | yourselves | ||
Archaic | ye | you | your | yours | yourselves | ||
Nonstandard | ye you all y'all youse etc. (see above) | yeer y'all's (or y'alls) | yeers y'all's (or y'alls) | yeerselves y'all's (or y'alls) selves | |||
Third-person | Singular | Masculine | he [lower-roman 1] | him [lower-roman 1] | his [lower-roman 1] | himself [lower-roman 1] | |
Feminine | she [lower-roman 1] | her [lower-roman 1] | hers | herself [lower-roman 1] | |||
Neuter | it | its | its | itself | |||
Epicene (see singular they) | they | them | their | theirs | themselves themself | ||
Plural | they | them | their | theirs | themselves | ||
Generic | Formal | one | one's | oneself | |||
Informal | you | your | yourself |
Pronoun references to a deity worshiped by people in the present are sometimes capitalized, although some writers use capitals only to prevent confusion: God helped Abraham carry out His law.
For further archaic forms, and information on the evolution of the personal pronouns of English, see Old English pronouns.
The pronoun you (and its other forms) can be used as a generic or indefinite pronoun, referring to a person in general. A more formal equivalent is the indefinite pronoun one (reflexive oneself, possessive one's). For example, you should keep your secrets to yourself may be used in place of the more formal one should keep one's secrets to oneself.
The masculine pronouns, he, him, and his are used to refer to male persons. The feminine pronouns she, her, and hers are used to refer to female persons. It and its are normally used to refer to an inanimate object or abstract concept; however, babies and young children may sometimes be referred to as it (e.g. a child needs its mother). [8] [9] Outside of these very limited contexts, use of it as a pronoun for people is generally avoided, due to the feeling that it is dehumanizing. [10]
Traditionally, in English, if the gender of a person was not known or ambiguous, then the masculine pronouns were often used by default (e.g. a good student always does his homework). Increasingly, though, singular they is used in such cases (see below). [11]
Animals are often referred to as it, but he and she are sometimes used for animals when the animal's sex is known and is of interest, particularly for higher animals, especially pets and other domesticated animals. [8] Inanimate objects with which humans have a close relationship, such as ships, cars and countries considered as political, rather than geographical, entities, are sometimes referred to using feminine pronouns such as she and her. [8] This may also be extended to other entities, such as towns.
The singular they emerged by the 14th century, about a century after the plural they. Even when used with singular meaning, they takes a plural verb: If attacked, the victim should remain exactly where they are. Due to this supposed grammatical inconsistency, use of singular they was discouraged by some grammarians during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in favor of using generic he. Since the 1970s, however, this trend has reversed, [12] and singular they now enjoys widespread acceptance. [13] [14]
In the early 21st century, use of singular they with known individuals emerged for some non-binary people, or when the sex or social gender of a person is unknown or unspecified. This is a way of producing gender-neutral language while avoiding other pronouns like he or she, he/she, or s/he. [15]
In English, genitive pronouns agree with the gender of the antecedent or referent. This is in contrast to many languages in which such pronouns agree with the gender of the head noun of the NP in which they appear. For example, in She saw her brother, the genitive pronoun her agrees with antecedent she. Both are feminine. In Italian, in contrast, the same sentences is Lei ha visto suo fratello. Here suo is a third-person, singular, masculine genitive pronoun. It agrees with fratello (brother), not with the feminine antecedent lei.[ citation needed ]
As noted above, most of the personal pronouns have distinct case forms [1] [16] – a subjective (nominative) form and an objective (oblique, accusative) form. [lower-alpha 2] In certain instances variation arises in the use of these forms.
As a general rule, the subjective form is used when the pronoun is the subject of a verb, as in he kicked the ball, whereas the objective form is used as the direct or indirect object of a verb, or the object (complement) of a preposition. [1] [16] For example: Sue kicked him, someone gave him the ball, Mary was with him.
When used as a predicative expression, i.e. as the complement of a form of the copula verb be, the subjective form was traditionally regarded as more correct (as in this is I, it was he), but nowadays the objective form is used predominantly (this is me, it was him), and the use of the subjective in such instances is normally regarded as very formal [1] [16] or pedantic; it is more likely (in formal English) when followed by a relative clause (it is we who sent them to die). In some cases the subjective may even appear ungrammatical, as in *is that we in the photograph? (where us would be expected).
When a pronoun is linked to other nouns or pronouns by a coordinating conjunction such as and or or, traditional grammar prescribes that the pronoun should appear in the same form as it would take if it were used alone in the same position: Jay and I will arrive later (since I is used for the subject of a verb), but between you and me (since me is used for the object of a preposition). However, in informal and less careful usage this rule may not be consistently followed; [17] it is common to hear Jay and me will arrive... and between you and I. The latter type (use of the subjective form in object position) is seen as an example of hypercorrection, resulting from an awareness that many instances of and me (like that in the first example) are considered to require correction to and I. [1] [16]
Similar deviations from the grammatical norm are quite common in other examples where the pronoun does not stand alone as the subject or object, as in Who said us Yorkshiremen [grammatical: we Yorkshiremen] are tight?
When a pronoun stands alone without an explicit verb or preposition, the objective form is commonly used, even when traditional grammarians might prefer the subjective: Who's sitting here? Me. (Here I might be regarded as grammatically correct, since it is short for I am (sitting here), but it would sound formal and pedantic, unless followed by am.)
A particular case of this type occurs when a pronoun stands alone following the word than. Here the objective form is again predominant in informal usage [1] (they are older than us), as would be expected if than were analyzed as a preposition. However traditionally than is considered a conjunction, and so in formal and grammatically careful English the pronoun often takes the form that would appear if than were followed by a clause: they are older than we (by analogy with ...than we are), but she likes him better than me (if the intended meaning is "...than she likes me").
For more examples of some of these points, see Disjunctive pronoun.
In linguistics, declension is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and determiners to indicate number, case, gender, and a number of other grammatical categories. Meanwhile, the inflectional change of verbs is called conjugation.
In grammar, the genitive case is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can also serve purposes indicating other relationships. For example, some verbs may feature arguments in the genitive case; and the genitive case may also have adverbial uses.
A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers that corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In various languages, nominal groups consisting of a noun and its modifiers belong to one of a few such categories. For instance, in English, one says I see them and they see me: the nominative pronouns I/they represent the perceiver and the accusative pronouns me/them represent the phenomenon perceived. Here, nominative and accusative are cases, that is, categories of pronouns corresponding to the functions they have in representation.
In grammar, the nominative case, 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 a predicative nominal or adjective, as opposed to its object, or other verb arguments. Generally, the noun "that is doing something" is in the nominative, and the nominative is often the form listed in dictionaries.
Novial is an international auxiliary language (IAL) created by Danish linguist Otto Jespersen in 1928. It was designed to facilitate human communication between speakers of different native languages. The name of the language is a blend of the Novial word novi and IAL.
English grammar is the set of structural rules of the English language. This includes the structure of words, phrases, clauses, sentences, and whole texts.
Arabic grammar is the grammar of the Arabic language. Arabic is a Semitic language and its grammar has many similarities with the grammar of other Semitic languages. Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic have largely the same grammar; colloquial spoken varieties of Arabic can vary in different ways.
Russian grammar employs an Indo-European inflexional structure, with considerable adaptation.
A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that refers to another noun or pronoun within the same sentence.
Standard Romanian shares largely the same grammar and most of the vocabulary and phonological processes with the other three surviving varieties of Eastern Romance, namely Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian, and Istro-Romanian.
The grammar of the Polish language is complex and characterized by a high degree of inflection, and has relatively free word order, although the dominant arrangement is subject–verb–object (SVO). There commonly are no articles, and there is frequent dropping of subject pronouns. Distinctive features include the different treatment of masculine personal nouns in the plural, and the complex grammar of numerals and quantifiers.
Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person, second person, or third person. Personal pronouns may also take different forms depending on number, 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.
German declension is the paradigm that German uses to define all the ways articles, adjectives and sometimes nouns can change their form to reflect their role in the sentence: subject, object, etc. Declension allows speakers to mark a difference between subjects, direct objects, indirect objects and possessives by changing the form of the word—and/or its associated article—instead of indicating this meaning through word order or prepositions. As a result, German can take a much more fluid approach to word order without the meaning being obscured. In English, a simple sentence must be written in strict word order. This sentence cannot be expressed in any other word order than how it is written here without changing the meaning. A translation of the same sentence from German to English would appear rather different and can be expressed with a variety of word order with little or no change in meaning.
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 clauses to relate the main clause to a subordinate one.
This article describes the grammar of Tigrinya, a South Semitic language which is spoken primarily in Eritrea and Ethiopia, and is written in Ge'ez script.
The Dutch language in its modern form does not have grammatical cases, and nouns only have singular and plural forms. Many remnants of former case declensions remain in the Dutch language, but few of them are productive. One exception is the genitive case, which is still productive to a certain extent. Although in the spoken language the case system was probably in a state of collapse as early as the 16th century, cases were still prescribed in the written standard up to 1946/1947. This article describes the system in use until then. For a full description of modern Dutch grammar, see Dutch grammar. See also History of Dutch orthography.
This article describes the grammar of the Scottish Gaelic language.
The English pronouns form a relatively small category of words in Modern English whose primary semantic function is that of a pro-form for a noun phrase. Traditional grammars consider them to be a distinct part of speech, while most modern grammars see them as a subcategory of noun, contrasting with common and proper nouns. Still others see them as a subcategory of determiner. In this article, they are treated as a subtype of the noun category.
In English, possessive words or phrases exist for nouns and most pronouns, as well as some noun phrases. These can play the roles of determiners or of nouns.
The grammar of the Manx language has much in common with related Indo-European languages, such as nouns that display gender, number and case and verbs that take endings or employ auxiliaries to show tense, person or number. Other morphological features are typical of Insular Celtic languages but atypical of other Indo-European languages. These include initial consonant mutation, inflected prepositions and verb–subject–object word order.
The use of they, their, them, and themselves as pronouns of indefinite gender and indefinite number is well established in speech and writing, even in literary and formal contexts.