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Personal pronouns arepronouns that are associated primarily with a particulargrammatical person – first person (asI), second person (asyou), or third person (asshe,it, he). Personal pronouns may also take different forms depending onnumber (usually singular or plural), grammatical or naturalgender,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 pronounit usually does).
The re-use in some languages of one personal pronoun to indicate a second personal pronoun with formality orsocial distance – commonly a second person plural to signify second person singular formal – is known as theT–V distinction, from theLatin pronounstu andvos. Examples are themajestic plural in English and the use ofvous in place oftu inFrench.
For specific details of the personal pronouns used in theEnglish language, seeEnglish personal pronouns.
Pronoun is a category of words. Apro-form is a type offunction word or expression that stands in for (expresses the same content as) anotherword,phrase,clause orsentence where themeaning 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.[2][p. 239]
In [1], the pronounit "stands in" for whatever was mentioned and is a good idea. In [2], the pronounit doesn't stand in for anything. No other word can function there with the same meaning; we don't say "the sky is raining" or "the weather is raining". So,it is a pronoun but not a pro-form. Finally, in [3],did so is a verb phrase, not a pronoun, but it is a pro-form standing for "help".
Languages typically have personal pronouns for each of the threegrammatical persons:
As noted above, within each person there are often different forms for differentgrammatical numbers, especially singular and plural. Languages which have other numbers, such asdual (e.g.Slovene),[3] may also have distinct pronouns for these.
Some languages distinguish betweeninclusive andexclusive 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 asmitripela ("they two and I") andyumitripela ("you two and I").[4]
Some languages do not have third-person personal pronouns, instead usingdemonstratives (e.g.Macedonian)[5] or full noun phrases.Latin used demonstratives rather than third-person pronouns (in fact the third-person pronouns in theRomance languages are descended from the Latin demonstratives).
In some cases personal pronouns can be used in place ofindefinite 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 formalone should hold one's oar in both hands (using the indefinite pronounone), it is more common to sayyou should hold your oar in both hands.
In many languages, personal pronouns, particularly those of the third person, differ depending on the gender of theirantecedent 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,singularthey 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, andit 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 inFrench, where the pronounsil andelle are used with masculine and feminine antecedents respectively, as are the pluralsils andelles). Sometimes natural and grammatical gender do not coincide, as with the German nounMädchen ("girl"), which is grammatically neuter but naturally feminine. (SeeGrammatical 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 pronounit to refer to a person (except in some cases to a small child), and although it is traditional to use the masculinehe to refer to a person of unspecified gender, the movement towardsgender-neutral language requires that another method be found, such as sayinghe or she. A common solution, particularly in informal language, is to usesingularthey. For more details seeGender 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 masculineils "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 sentenceje suis petit ("I am small") the speaker is male and so the pronounje is masculine, whereas inje 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:
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 forshe (她), which is pronounced identically ashe (他) and thus is still indistinguishable in speech (tā).
Koreangeunyeo (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]
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 singulartu is used only for familiars, the pluralvous being used as a singular in other cases (Russian follows a similar pattern); German, where the third-person pluralsie (capitalized asSie) is used as both singular and plural in the second person in non-familiar uses; and Polish, where the nounpan ("gentleman") and its feminine and plural equivalents are used as polite second-person pronouns. For more details, seeT–V distinction.
Some languages, such asJapanese,Korean and manySoutheast Asian languages likeVietnamese,Thai, andIndonesian, 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 aswatashi or the even more politewatakushi, while young men may use the student-likeboku and police officers may usehonkan ("this officer"). In informal situations, women may use the colloquialatashi, and men may use the rougherore.
Pronouns also often take different forms based on theirsyntactic function, and in particular on theirgrammatical case. English distinguishes thenominative form (I,you,he,she,it,we,they), used principally as thesubject of a verb, from theoblique form (me,you,him,her,it,us,them), used principally as theobject 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 theRomance languages, which (with the exception ofRomanian) 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 aredisjunctive pronouns, used in isolation and in certain distinct positions (such as after a conjunction likeand), andprepositional pronouns, used as the complement of a preposition.
Some languages have strong and weak forms of personal pronouns, the former being used in positions with greaterstress. Some authors further distinguish weak pronouns fromclitic pronouns, which are phonetically less independent.[6][7]
Examples are found in Polish, where the masculine third-person singular accusative and dative forms arejego andjemu (strong) andgo andmu (weak). English hasstrong and weak pronunciations for some pronouns, such asthem (pronounced/ðɛm/ when strong, but/ðəm/,/ɛm/,/əm/ or even/m̩/ when weak).
Some languages—for instance, mostAustralian Aboriginal languages—have distinct classes of free and bound pronouns. These are distinguished by theirmorphological 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 withanimacy restrictions on free pronouns includeWanyjirra,[9]Bilinarra,[10]Warrongo,[11]Guugu Yimidhirr[12] and many others. Bound pronouns can take a variety of forms, including verbalprefixes (these are usuallysubject markers—seeBardi[13]—but can markobjects as well—seeGuniyandi[14]), verbalenclitics (includingpossessive markers) andauxiliary morphemes. These various forms are exemplified below:
ngunhi=lu=na ngadhi
gave=3.ERG=3.ABS 1SG.OBL
'He gave it to me'
Kuka-tju
meat-1SG
mantjila
get
purnpurntu-tju
fly-ERG
purrururruritjunku-tjaku
blow.it-lest
Kuka-tju mantjila purnpurntu-tju purrururruritjunku-tjaku
meat-1SG get fly-ERG blow.it-lest
Get my meat so that the flies won't blow it
Languages may also havereflexive pronouns (and sometimesreciprocal pronouns) closely linked to the personal pronouns. English has the reflexive formsmyself,yourself,himself,herself,themself,theirself,itself,ourselves,yourselves,themselves,themselves (there is alsooneself, from theindefinite pronounone). 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 asintensive pronoun (as inI did it myself).
Personal pronouns are also often associated withpossessive forms. English has two sets of such forms: the possessivedeterminers (also called possessive adjectives)my,your,his,her,its,our andtheir, and the possessive pronounsmine,yours,his,hers,its (rare),ours,theirs (for more details seeEnglish 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 theSlavic 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, inSlovene:
The same phenomenon occurs in theNorth Germanic languages, for exampleDanish, which can produce the sentencesAnna gav Mariasin bog andAnna gav Mariahendes bog, the distinction being analogous to that in the Slovene example above.
Third-person personal pronouns, and sometimes others, often have an explicitantecedent – anoun phrase which refers to the same person or thing as the pronoun (seeanaphora). 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:
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 beambiguity as to what the intended antecedent is:
In some languages, subject or object pronouns can be dropped in certain situations (seePro-drop language). In particular, in anull-subject language, it is permissible for the subject of a verb to be omitted. Information about thegrammatical 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 arestressed.
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 calleddummy pronouns. This can be seen in English with the pronounit in such sentences asit is raining andit is nice to relax. (This is less likely inpro-drop languages, since such pronouns would probably be omitted.)
Personal pronouns are not normallycapitalized, except in particular cases. In English the first-person subject pronounI is always capitalized, and in someChristian texts the personal pronouns referring toJesus orGod arecapitalized (He,Thou, etc.).
In many European languages, but not English, the second-person pronouns are often capitalized for politeness when they refer to the person one is writing to (such as in a letter).
For details, seeCapitalization § Pronouns.
*Words likeher,your andhis are sometimes called (possessive) pronouns; other terms arepossessive determiner or possessive adjective.
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