Pronoun vs pro-form Pronoun is a category of words. A
pro-form is a type of
function word or expression that stands in for (expresses the same content as) another
word,
phrase,
clause or
sentence where the
meaning is recoverable from the context. Pronouns mostly function as pro-forms, but there are pronouns that are not pro-forms and pro-forms that are not pronouns.[p. 239] • ''It's a good idea''. (pronoun and pro-form) • ''It's raining''. (pronoun but not pro-form) •
I asked her to help, and she did so right away. (pro-form but not pronoun) In [1], the pronoun
it "stands in" for whatever was mentioned and is a good idea. In [2], the pronoun
it 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".
Person and number of personal pronouns in
Serbo-CroatianLanguages typically have personal pronouns for each of the three
grammatical persons: •
first-person pronouns normally refer to the speaker, in the case of the singular (as the English
I), or to the speaker and others, in the case of the plural (as the English
we). •
second-person pronouns normally refer to the person or persons being addressed (as the English
you); in the plural they may also refer to the person or persons being addressed together with third parties. •
third-person pronouns normally refer to third parties other than the speaker or the person being addressed (as the English
he,
she,
it,
they). As noted above, within each person there are often different forms for different
grammatical numbers, especially singular and plural. Languages which have other numbers, such as
dual (e.g.
Slovene), may also have distinct pronouns for these. Some languages distinguish between
inclusive and exclusive 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 as
mitripela ("they two and I") and
yumitripela ("you two and I"). Some languages do not have third-person personal pronouns, instead using
demonstratives (e.g.
Macedonian) or full noun phrases.
Latin used demonstratives rather than third-person pronouns (in fact the third-person pronouns in the
Romance languages are descended from the Latin demonstratives). In some cases personal pronouns can be used in place of
indefinite 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 formal ''one should hold one's oar in both hands
(using the indefinite pronoun one
), it is more common to say you should hold your oar in both hands''.
Gender In many languages, personal pronouns, particularly those of the third person, differ depending on the gender of their
antecedent 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,
singular they 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, and
it 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 in
French, where the pronouns
il and
elle are used with masculine and feminine antecedents respectively, as are the plurals
ils and
elles). Sometimes natural and grammatical gender do not coincide, as with the German noun
Mädchen ("girl"), which is grammatically neuter but naturally feminine. (See 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 pronoun
it to refer to a person (except in some cases to a small child), and although it is traditional to use the masculine
he to refer to a person of unspecified gender, the movement towards
gender-neutral language requires that another method be found, such as saying
he or she. A common solution, particularly in informal language, is to use
singular they. For more details see
Gender 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 masculine
ils "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 sentence
je suis petit ("I am small") the speaker is male and so the pronoun
je is masculine, whereas in
je 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: •
Malay (including Indonesian and Malaysian standards),
Malagasy of Madagascar, Philippine languages, Māori, Rapa Nui, Hawaiian, and other
Austronesian languages • Chinese, Burmese, and other
Sino-Tibetan languages • Vietnamese and other
Mon–Khmer languages •
Igbo,
Yoruba, and other
Volta-Niger languages • Swahili, and other
Bantu languages • Haitian Creole •
Turkish and other
Turkic languages • Luo and other
Nilo-Saharan languages •
Hungarian,
Finnish, Estonian, and other
Uralic languages • Hindi-Urdu •
Georgian •
Japanese •
Armenian •
Korean •
Mapudungun •
Basque •
Persian 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 for
she (她) and in 2025 a gender neutral character (a composition of ㄨ and 也). The three forms are pronounced identically as
he (他) and thus are still indistinguishable in speech (tā). Korean
geunyeo (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".
Formality 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 singular
tu is used only for familiars, the plural
vous being used as a singular in other cases (Russian follows a similar pattern); German, where the third-person plural
sie (capitalized as
Sie) is used as both singular and plural in the second person in non-familiar uses; and Polish, where the noun
pan ("gentleman") and its feminine and plural equivalents are used as polite second-person pronouns. For more details, see
T–V distinction. Some languages, such as
Japanese,
Korean and many
Southeast Asian languages like
Vietnamese,
Thai, and
Indonesian, 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 as
watashi or the even more polite
watakushi, while young men may use the student-like
boku and police officers may use
honkan ("this officer"). In informal situations, women may use the colloquial
atashi, and men may use the rougher
ore.
Case Pronouns also often take different forms based on their
syntactic function, and in particular on their
grammatical case. English distinguishes the
nominative form (
I,
you,
he,
she,
it,
we,
they), used principally as the
subject of a verb, from the
oblique form (
me,
you,
him,
her,
it,
us,
them), used principally as the
object 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 the
Romance languages, which (with the exception of
Romanian) 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 are
disjunctive pronouns, used in isolation and in certain distinct positions (such as after a conjunction like
and), and
prepositional pronouns, used as the complement of a preposition.
Strong and weak forms Some languages have strong and weak forms of personal pronouns, the former being used in positions with greater
stress. Some authors further distinguish weak pronouns from
clitic pronouns, which are phonetically less independent. Examples are found in Polish, where the masculine third-person singular accusative and dative forms are
jego and
jemu (strong) and
go and
mu (weak). English has
strong and weak pronunciations for some pronouns, such as
them (pronounced when strong, but , , or even when weak).
Free vs. bound pronouns Some languages—for instance, most
Australian Aboriginal languages—have distinct classes of free and bound pronouns. These are distinguished by their
morphological 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. Examples of languages with
animacy restrictions on free pronouns include
Wanyjirra,
Bilinarra,
Warrongo,
Guugu Yimidhirr and many others. Bound pronouns can take a variety of forms, including verbal
prefixes (these are usually
subject markers—see
Bardi—but can mark
objects as well—see
Guniyandi), verbal
enclitics (including
possessive markers) and
auxiliary morphemes. These various forms are exemplified below: ;Free pronoun (
Wangkatja) ;Verb prefix (
Bardi) ;Auxiliary morpheme (
Wambaya) ;Possessive clitic (
Ngaanyatjarra)
Reflexive and possessive forms Languages may also have
reflexive pronouns (and sometimes
reciprocal pronouns) closely linked to the personal pronouns. English has the reflexive forms
myself,
yourself,
himself,
herself,
themself,
theirself,
itself,
ourselves,
yourselves,
themselves,
themselves (there is also
oneself, from the
indefinite pronoun one). 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 as
intensive pronoun (as in
I did it myself). Personal pronouns are also often associated with
possessive forms. English has two sets of such forms: the possessive
determiners (also called possessive adjectives)
my,
your,
his,
her,
its,
our and
their, and the possessive pronouns
mine,
yours,
his,
hers,
its (rare),
ours,
theirs (for more details see
English 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 the
Slavic 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, in
Slovene: :
Eva je dala Maji svojo knjigo ("Eva gave Maja
her [reflexive] book", i.e. Eva's own book) :
Eva je dala Maji njeno knjigo ("Eva gave Maja
her [non-reflexive] book", i.e. Maja's book) The same phenomenon occurs in the
North Germanic languages, for example
Danish, which can produce the sentences
Anna gav Maria sin bog and
Anna gav Maria hendes bog, the distinction being analogous to that in the Slovene example above. ==Syntax==