Pronoun | Meaning, Examples, Types, & Gender | Britannica (original) (raw)

pronoun, a word that replaces a noun or noun phrase and one of eight parts of speech in English grammar. Pronouns are used to avoid repetition of nouns and can help sentences be more succinct. There are several different types of pronouns, which are described in detail below.

Personal pronouns

Personal pronouns refer to the speaker or the person or thing the speaker is talking to or about. The form of a personal pronoun is determined by:

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• Person: Personal pronouns refer to the speaker (first person), the person to whom the speaker is talking (second person), or the person, animal, or thing that is being talked about (third person). In English first-person pronouns (when they are the subject of a sentence) are I and we. The second-person pronoun is you, and third-person pronouns are he, she, it, and they. Like many languages, English only marks gender on pronouns in the third person. Unlike most other languages that mark gender on these pronouns, English lacks grammatical gender, and the determination of which pronoun to use is based on the logical gender of a person or animal, and gender is not marked for the plural they. (For a more in-depth discussion of gendered pronouns, see gender pronoun.) The masculine he is used for men, boys, and (sometimes) male animals, while the feminine she is used for women, girls, and (sometimes) female animals. The neuter it is generally used for nonhuman living things and inanimate objects. There are exceptions to these rules: some objects such as ships are frequently referred to as she rather than it; although it is generally considered offensive when used in relation to humans, it may used for infants and other young children without insult.
  • The boy hurries to school because he is running late.
  • The woman opened the door so she could go inside.
  • The cat meowed before it jumped on the couch.
• Number: Pronouns are either singular and refer to one person or thing or plural and refer to multiple people or things. I, he, she, and it are all singular, while we and they are usually plural. You is both singular and plural, as contemporary English has lost the singular form thou (although it is retained in some religious contexts). We as singular (the so-called royal we) is used in certain contexts. They is also used in the singular for a person whose gender is unknown to the speaker or who has a nonbinary gender identity.
• Case: There are three cases that affect personal pronouns in English: the subjective (or nominative), the objective (or accusative), and the possessive (or genitive). Pronouns in the subjective (I, we, he) and objective cases (me, us, him) are the subjects and objects of a sentence, respectively. Possessive pronouns show belonging or close association. Some possessive pronouns are frequently also categorized as adjectives, including my, our, your, his, her, its, and their. These words modify the noun that is possessed:
  • This is my apple.
  • This is your book.
  • This is her car.
  • This is their dog.
    Others, such as mine, ours, yours, hers, and theirs, stand in apposition to the nouns they possess:
  • This apple is mine.
  • This book is yours.
  • This car is hers.
  • This dog is theirs.

The different forms of personal pronouns are summarized in the tables below. A number of examples follow each table.

first-person pronouns

• I asked the girl to give me the pencil because it was mine.
• We bought some markers.
• They sold the markers to us.
• The markers are ours.

second-person pronouns

In the following examples, note that the sentence by itself does not indicate how many people went to the park, for example. Additional context is needed to determine if you refers to a single listener or multiple listeners.

• You went to the park.
• The boy gave you the eraser.
• These notebooks are yours.

third-person pronouns

• He gave the book to her.
• She asked him to hand her the book.
• The book is hers, but the folder is his.
• They said that the crayons were theirs.

Impersonal uses of personal pronouns

The second-person pronoun you and the third-person pronoun it can be used to refer to a general subject. You may be used in a general sense to mean “a person” or “someone”:

• You have to turn the screw counterclockwise to unscrew it.
• You can check out books from the library.
• You may not smoke on an airplane.

It is also frequently as the subject of an impersonal verb:

• It rains.
• It is morning.
• It is OK.

Reflexive and emphatic pronouns

Reflexive pronouns are used when the verb in a sentence acts on the subject.

reflexive pronouns

• I dressed myself.
• You hurt yourself playing basketball.
• You taught yourselves to sew.
• He cut himself while chopping vegetables.
• She burned herself on the stove.
• The bird washed itself in the bird bath.
• They introduced themselves to the class.

Emphatic pronouns look the same as reflexive pronouns but are used to stress the role of the subject in the sentence.

• I went to the store myself.
• He told me himself.
• They themselves wrote the note.

Relative pronouns

Relative pronouns are pronouns that introduce relative clauses. They often, but not always, closely follow the noun they replace, called the antecedent. Relative pronouns in English are who, whom, whose, that, and which. Who is the only relative pronoun that has different forms depending on the case. The subjective form is who, with whom and whose as the objective and possessive cases, respectively. All three forms can be used in the singular or plural:

• This is the girl who gave him the books.
• This is the boy to whom she gave the books.
• These are the students whose books were loaned.

Which and that usually refer to things or ideas, and each have only one form. Which can be the object of a preposition (e.g. of which, for which, in which), while that cannot serve this function, although whose is sometimes used to mean of which. Which and that are both singular and plural:

• The car that drives on the road is fast.
• The cars that drive on the road are fast.
• The car, which drives on the road, is fast.
• The cars, which drive on the road, are fast
• This is the notebook in which he wrote his essay.

Demonstrative pronouns

Demonstrative pronouns point to the noun that they replace. There are four demonstrative pronouns in English: this, that, these, and those. This and that are singular and refer to things relatively near to or far from the speaker, respectively. These is the plural of this and those is the plural of that:

• This is my dog.
• That is your car.
• These are his cats.
• Those are her pens.

Interrogative pronouns

Interrogative pronouns are used to ask questions. They are who, whom, whose, what, and which. Who, whom, and whose ask questions about people, with who being the subjective form, whom being the objective, and whose being the possessive:

• Who is at the door?
• To whom did you give the package?
• With whom did the man speak?
• Whose is the dog?

What and which are used to ask questions about things or ideas. What asks more general questions, while which asks the listener to select within a defined set:

• What did the teacher say?
• Which bag is the notebook in?
• What books do you like?
• Which of these books do you like?

Indefinite pronouns

Indefinite pronouns are those that do not refer to specific people or things. Some of them are always singular and fall into one of three categories: those that end in -one, those that end in -body, and those that end in -thing:

singular indefinite pronouns

• Nobody is in the room.
• Someone is in the room.
• Anything could be in the room.

Other indefinite pronouns are always plural. These are several, few, both, and many:

• Several of my friends are going to the mall.
• A few of her cats like going outside in the winter.
• Both of my parents are at work.

Some indefinite pronouns can be singular or plural. These include all, any, more, most, and some:

• All is well that ends well.
• All are welcome.
• Some like it hot.

Distributive pronouns

Distributive pronouns refer to people or things separately or one at a time and are always grammatically singular. The English-language distributive pronouns are each, either, and neither:

• Each of the boys took a pen from the jar.
• My brother and my sister just left. Neither of them are home now.
• Either of you can have the last apple.

Teagan Wolter