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Jan 16, 2024 · Personal pronouns are pronouns that change form based on their grammatical person—that is, based on whether they refer to the person speaking or writing (the first person), the person or thing being spoken to (the second person), or the person or thing being spoken about (the third person). Here is a list of the main personal pronouns :
- How Are Pronouns Used in Sentences?
- Pronouns vs. Nouns
- Pronouns vs. Determiners
- Personal Pronouns
- Demonstrative Pronouns
- Interrogative Pronouns
- Relative Pronouns
- Indefinite Pronouns
- Reciprocal Pronouns
- Dummy Pronouns
The main function of pronouns is to replace nouns. Because of this, they are used in sentences in similar ways to nouns. Like nouns, pronouns commonly serve as the subject of a sentence, followed by a verb(a word expressing an action). A pronoun can also function as the object in a sentence—either a direct or indirect object: 1. The direct objectis...
While pronouns constitute a relatively small class of words that tends not to change over time, nouns are a much broader class that is constantly expanding. Like pronouns, nouns refer to things, people, places, and concepts, but they do so with much greater specificity. Like pronouns, nouns can function as the head of a noun phrase and as the objec...
Many pronouns are closely related to determiners, being spelledsimilarly (or identically) and expressing related meanings. For example, possessive pronouns like “yours” are closely related to possessive determiners like “your”; and demonstrative pronouns like “that” are identical to the demonstrative determiners. The grammatical distinction between...
Personal pronouns are words like “he” that refer to yourself, the person you’re addressing, or other people and things. They usually refer to an antecedentbut may occur without one when the reference is self-evident (e.g., “I” always refers to the person saying or writing it). Personal pronouns can change their form based on: 1. Person (first-, sec...
The four demonstrative pronouns (this, that, these, and those) are used to indicate something previously mentioned or, in conversation, something that is clear from the context. For example, in the sentence “Take this,” “this” has no explicit antecedent, but it would be clear in context that it referred to whatever object you were being given. The ...
Interrogative pronounsare used (along with other types of interrogative words) to introduce questions. The interrogative pronouns are: 1. What and which, used to ask questions about things 2. Who and whom, used to ask about people 3. Whose, used to ask about ownership
A relative pronounis used to introduce a relative clause—a phrase that usually supplies more information about the preceding noun. They have a lot in common with interrogative pronouns. The relative pronouns are: 1. Which(ever), that, and what(ever), used in relation to things 2. Who(ever) and whom(ever), used in relation to people 3. Whose, used t...
Indefinite pronouns are words like “somebody” that refer to an unspecified person or thing. Many of them are formed using some combination of some-, any-, every-, or no- with -thing, -one, -where, or -body. There are also various indefinite pronouns used to describe quantity, such as “little,” “many,” “none,” and “enough.” And there are distributiv...
Reciprocal pronouns are used to indicate a reciprocal relationship between two people or things, where the members of a group each perform the same action relative to the other(s). The English reciprocal pronouns are each other andone another. Some writers claim that “each other” should only be used to refer to groups of two and “one another” to gr...
A dummy pronoun (also called an expletive) is a pronoun that doesn’t have any explicit meaning but is necessary to the sentence structure. Unlike other pronouns, dummy pronouns don’t actually replace a noun. The two words used as dummy pronouns in English are it and there. Note that both words can also fulfillother grammatical roles. Dummy pronouns...
- Personal Pronouns. What is a personal pronoun? Personal pronouns are used for a specific object or person and they change their forms to indicate the different genders, numbers, case, and persons speaking.
- Demonstrative Pronouns. What is a demonstrative pronoun? Demonstrative Pronouns are used to show or identify one or a number of nouns that may be far or near in distance or time.
- Interrogative Pronouns. What is a interrogative pronoun? Who, Whom, Which and What are Interrogative Pronouns as they are used to ask questions about a person or object that we do not know about.
- Relative Pronouns. What is a relative pronoun? Relative Pronouns are used to join or relate two different clauses together by referring to the noun in the previous clause using the pronouns – Who, Whom, Whose, Which and That.
- Personal Pronouns. A personal pronoun takes the place of people or things. The personal pronouns are "I," "you," "he," "she," "it," "we," and "they."
- Possessive Pronouns. A possessive pronoun shows possession. The possessive pronouns are "mine," "yours," "his," "hers," "ours," and "theirs." I always check if the art across the street is better than mine.
- Relative Pronouns. A relative pronoun introduces a clause that describes a noun. (The clause is called an adjective clause.) The relative pronouns are "that," "which," "who," "whom," and "whose."
- Demonstrative Pronouns. The demonstrative pronouns are "this," "that," "these," and "those." A demonstrative pronoun can refer to something previously mentioned or to something in the speaker's surroundings (e.g., something being pointed at by the speaker).
- Subject pronouns are used when the pronoun is the subject of the sentence. You can remember subject pronouns easily by filling in the blank subject space for a simple sentence.
- Subject pronouns are also used if they rename the subject. They will follow to be verbs, such as is, are, was, were, am, will be, had been, etc.
- This rule surprises even language watchers: when who refers to a personal pronoun (I, you, he, she, we, they), it takes the verb that agrees with that pronoun.
- In addition to subject pronouns, there are also object pronouns, known more specifically as direct object, indirect object, and object of a preposition (for more detail, see the definition of a verb in the Finding Nouns, Verbs, and Subjects section).
Pronouns: personal ( I, me, you, him, it, they, etc.) - English Grammar Today - a reference to written and spoken English grammar and usage - Cambridge Dictionary
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Definition of a Pronoun. A pronoun is defined as ‘a word that is used instead of a noun or a noun phrase’, according to the Cambridge Dictionary. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines pronouns as ‘any of a small set of words (such as I, she, he, you, it, we, or they) in a language that are used as substitutes for nouns or noun phrases and whose referents are named or understood in the ...
