GRAMMAR I

TYPES OF PRONOUNS

Most pronouns replace full noun phrases, and can be seen as an economy device. Personal
and demonstrative pronouns for example serve as pointers to the neighbouring text or speech
situation. Other pronouns have a more general reference and can be use for substitution or ellipsis.
The major pronoun classes are: personal pronouns, reflexive pronouns, demonstrative pronouns
and indefinite pronouns.

Personal pronouns: have different forms according to number, person, case and gender

Personal pronouns and corresponding possessive and reflexive forms.

person personal pronouns possessive reflexive pronoun

nominative accusative determiner pronoun

1st
singular I me my mine myself
plural we us our ours ourselves

2nd
singular you you your yours yourself
plural you you your yours yourselves

3rd
singular he him his his himself
she her her hers herself
it it its --- itself
plural they them their theirs themselves

Case forms of pronouns: the form of the personal pronouns varies according to case.
Nominative personal pronouns are used as the subject of a clause whereas the accusative
form can occur in other positions as for example an object. The possessive determiners and
possessive pronouns are in effect the genitive form of the personal pronouns.

Person forms in pronouns: in spite of their name the personal pronouns can have a
personal or non-personal reference. I, you, me, us, our generally have personal reference, it
has a non-personal reference and they and them can have personal or non-personal reference,
being the plural of it

Person and pronoun usage: the first, second and third persons singular are not difficult to
understand but in the others there are some special cases:

First person we: the singular I is unambiguous the plural we/us/ours can be
different according to context. We can include or exclude the addressee or include
other people apart from the addressee.

1
 What game should we play?
Nancy we all love you.

By adding other words the speaker can be more explicit, or by using I/we in combination with
another pronoun or proper noun, and the speaker is left to decide who we are in each situation.

We all believe in him.

We Europeans had a hard time during the war.
We’ve got a common bond, you and I.
It was late so me and my friend Jane decided to go home.

In academic texts we can identify three uses of we. When it refers to the author(s) of a text.
i.e. We spoke about this in the chapter on insects. When we refers to the author(s) and reader(s)
assuming they both know what is being referred to i.e. We are now able to understand why our
information was misleading. When it refers to people in general and here it has a generic reference.
i.e. When we start talking we often cease to listen.

Second person you: this is similar to we as regards interpretations. You can be

either singular or plural and it is not always clear if it refers to one or more people. It
can also be clarified by adding more information.

What did you all do yesterday?

You three have never been on holiday together, have you?
Are you guys going out tonight?

Third person it, he, she, they: generally third person pronouns are important because
they make referential links in a conversation with what has been said before
(anaphoric) or on fewer occasions what will be said later in the conversation
(cataphoric):

My cousin works at Macy’s she is a designer and she works in the children’s
department. (anaphoric)
On his arrival Mr. Bond took a bath and changed his clothes. (cataphoric)

It also acts as a dummy pronoun, it does not have a specific reference but it has a role as ‘place
filler’, particularly as an empty subject.

It’s cold in here.

It’s a long way home.
It is a pity he doesn’t have a better job.

Generic use of personal pronouns: the personal pronouns we, you, they can all be used to
refer to people in general. They tend to maintain their basic meaning as first, second and third
person pronouns. Thus we is typical in written style and is based on shared experience. You is
typical of spoken English and appeals to common human experience inviting empathy from the
listener and they is also common in speech and refers to people in general ‘not you and me’ a
fourth pronoun that mentions people in general is one.

We cannot nibble at quantum theory, if we are to understand it we must swallow it

whole not digest it.

2
 You’ve got to be a bit careful if you don’t know the road.
As they say ‘it never rains but it pours’.
One can have too much of a good thing.

Case: nominative and accusative personal pronouns: most of the personal pronouns
have a distinction between nominative and accusative forms as we have seen above. The
nominative is used as a subject and the accusative can be an object or a complement of a
preposition. Sometimes, however, there is a variation. There is a tendency for the accusative form
to take the place of the nominative in popular usage.

There are variations in the pronoun choice after forms of be, after as and than and also in
stand-alone phrases:

Hello beautiful, it’s me!! (normal choice in practice)

So maybe it’s I, he said to himself. (correct)
She is as bad as me and you. (predominates, specially in conversation)
You are closer to him than I. (correct)
Who told him? Me!!!
Me and my friend Clara went to the cinema.

Possessive pronouns: the possessive pronouns are like possessive determiners, except that
they constitute a whole noun phrase. They are typically used when the head noun can be found in
the preceding context. They depend a great deal on context for their interpretation, so they are
much more common in conversation than in writing. In the examples below the antecedent is
underlined, the possessive pronoun is parallel to the elliptic use of the genitive:

The house will be hers when her divorce comes through.

Some people work in worse conditions than mine.
Whose is this? Ours.

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