A pronoun is a word that is used to replace a noun. It looks irritating if a name is
being repeated again and again in the text so in order to smoothen and ease we use
pronouns. A pronoun can stand for a noun or noun phrase. Sometimes it can stand
for a clause or sentence as well. A word to which pronoun refers back in the
sentence is called antecedent. e.g.
Ali is my friend. He is also my class fellow.
Climbing the hill is not an easy Activity. It needs a lot of energy.
There are several types of pronoun. The major subclasses of pronouns are:
Personal pronouns: I/me, he/him, etc.
Possessive pronouns: my/mine, your/yours, etc.
Reflexive pronouns: myself, yourself, etc
Personal Pronoun
I, we, you, he, (she, it), they are called Personal Pronouns because they stand for
the three persons. First one is the person speaking, second one is the person
spoken to and last one is the person spoken of.
The Pronouns I and we, which denote the person or persons speaking, are said to
be Personal Pronouns of the First Person. The Pronoun you, which denotes the
person or persons spoken to, is said to be a Personal Pronoun of the Second
Person. The pronouns he (she) and they, which denote the person or persons
spoken of, are said to be Personal Pronouns of the Third Person. It, although it
denotes the thing spoken of, is also called a Personal Pronoun of the Third Person.
Quiz: A student asks which is correct: between you and I or between you and me.
What do you say?
Possessive Pronouns
The possessive pronouns exhibit contrasts for person (first person, second person,
or third person) and for number (singular or plural). Like the personal pronouns,
possessive pronouns have gender-based contrasts (masculine, feminine or
Neutral) in the third-person singular. Each possessive pronoun has two distinct
forms, the dependent form and the independent form. Dependent possessives are used before a noun as: This is my car. I’ve borrowed your computer.
She took his/her photograph.
Independent possessives are used without a following noun. They most
commonly occur after of, in independent genitives as:
a friend of mine
this partner of yours
a colleague of his/hers
an uncle of ours
Independent possessives also occur in other positions, especially when the context
makes clear what the pronoun refers to:
John’s car is fast, but mine is cheaper to run.
Mine = My car
You are in my address book, but am I in yours?
Yours = Your address book
Reflexive and Intensive/Emphatic Pronouns
The reflexive and Intensive/Emphatic pronouns end in -self (singular) or -selves
(plural). They exhibit distinctions of person (first person, second person or third
person), and number (singular or plural). The third-person singular reflexives
(himself/herself/itself) show distinctions of gender (masculine, feminine or nonpersonal).
The reflexive pronouns are used to refer back to the subject of the same sentence:
e.g.
Majid was very badly injured and is now unable to feed himself.
That car is in a class all by itself.
Here, himself refers back to Majid, and Itself refers back to The Car, the subjects
of the sentences.
Less commonly, reflexive pronouns are used for emphasis, in such case it will be
called Emphatic or Intensive pronoun. e.g.
The Chancellor mentioned tax cuts, but he himself knows that the time is not
right for reform.
The Queen herself attended the party.
In such cases as mentioned above the reflexives himself and herself co-occur with
the corresponding personal pronoun (subjective case) he and the queen, and in
case it is removed from the sentence the sentence will stand intact. In such cases it is called emphatic/Intensive pronoun. Similarly:
I myself
we ourselves
you yourself
they themselves
she herself
Gender-Neutral Pronouns
English lacks a gender-neutral pronoun in the singular. He is masculine, and she
is feminine, but no pronoun exists to refer to people of unknown or unidentified
sex (it can only be used to refer to objects and animals, not to people). Therefore a
problem arises in sentences such as:
Somebody has left his coat behind.
Clearly, the sex of ‘somebody’ is not known, so there is no way of knowing
whether to use his coat or her coat. Traditionally, the masculine his has been used
in these circumstances, as in the example above.
However, the arbitrary choice of his over her is now felt by many people to be
unacceptably sexist. A common solution is to use his or her (or his/her):
Somebody has left his or her coat behind. Likewise, the subjective pronouns he or
she, he/she (and even s/he) are sometimes used as gender-neutral pronouns:
Encourage your child to read when he or she reaches the age of 3.
However, this can be stylistically irritating, especially when it is repeated: He or she has to satisfy the jury that he or she is right.
A candidate who wishes to enter the school before his or her eighteenth birthday
may be asked to write to state his or her reasons.
Recently, the plural pronouns their (possessive) and they (subjective) are
increasingly being used:
Somebody has left their coat behind.
Encourage your child to read when they reach the age of three.
5 Demonstrative Pronouns
The demonstrative pronouns are this, that, these, those. These pronouns are used
to point out the objects to which they refer. This and that are singular, and are
used with singular nouns:
This was my sister’s bag.
That looks like the car I used to drive.
These and those are plural, and are used with plural nouns:
These are nice shoes, but they look uncomfortable.
Those look like riper than the apples on my tree.
Demonstrative pronouns always identify nouns, whether those nouns are named
specifically or not. For example: “I can’t believe this.” We have no idea what
“this” is, but it’s definitely something the writer cannot believe. It exists, even
though we don’t know what it is.
Demonstrative pronouns are usually used to describe animals, places, or things,
however they can be used to describe people when the person is identified, i.e.,
This sounds like Ali Zafar singing.
Note: Do not confuse demonstrative pronouns with demonstrative adjectives. The
words are identical, but demonstrative adjectives qualify nouns, whereas
demonstrative pronouns stand alone.
Demonstrative pronouns can be used in place of a noun, so long as the noun being
replaced can be understood from the pronoun’s context.
Relative Pronouns
The relative pronouns are: who, whom, whose, which, and that. These pronouns
perform double function; they work as a pronoun and a conjunction. Relative pronouns introduce a relative clause.
That’s the man who lives beside us.
That’s the man whom we met yesterday.
The problem which we’re facing is very serious.
The thing that worries me most is the overdraft.
Who and whom differ in case. Who is subjective?
the man who lives beside us
Whom is objective:
the man whom we met (cf. we met the man)
In formal contexts, and especially in writing, whom is used after a preposition.
the man on whom we rely
the people with whom he used to work
the person to whom it is addressed
In less formal contexts, including everyday speech, whom is often omitted
altogether, and the preposition is moved to the end:
the man we rely on
the people he used to work with
the person it is addressed to
Interrogative Pronoun
An interrogative pronoun often stands for something that we are not aware of yet,
because we are asking about it. We use these pronouns specifically to ask questions.
These pronouns are special because they all start with “Wh”, which makes them easy to
remember. Do not confuse them with what most school teachers call the “5 W’s – who, what, where,
why, and when,” because in reality, these are not all interrogative pronouns.
The interrogative pronouns that most English speakers are aware of are: whom, whose,
who, what, and which.These are the pronouns that help English speakers find out information. The words
“whatsoever” and “whichever” are also used sometimes, and they are considered
interrogative pronouns as well.
What is your favorite color?
Whose shirt is this?
Whatsoever do you mean by that?
Whom were you speaking with last night?
Which of these two do you prefer?
Distributive Pronoun
Each, either, neither are called Distributive Pronouns because they refer to
persons or things one at a time. For this reason they are always singular and as
such followed by the verb in the singular.
Each of the boys gets a prize.
Each took it in turn.
Either of these roads leads to the railway station.
Either of you can go.
Neither of the accusations is true.
Indefinite Pronoun
An indefinite pronoun does not refer to any specific person, thing or amount. It is
vague and "not definite". Some typical indefinite pronouns are:
all, another, any, anybody/anyone, anything, each, everybody/everyone,
everything, few, many, nobody, none, one, several, some, somebody/
someone
Most indefinite pronouns are either singular or plural. However, some of them can
be singular in one context and plural in another. The most common indefinite
pronouns are listed below, with examples, as singular, plural or singular/plural.
Notice that a singular pronoun takes a singular verb and that any personal
pronoun should also agree (in number and gender). Look at these examples:
Each of the players has a doctor.
One must not praise one’s self.
Similarly, plural pronouns need plural agreement:
Many have expressed their views.
Pronoun It
The pronoun it has two major uses: First, as a personal pronoun it can replace a
third-person singular noun with non-human reference:
The car skidded on ice. It skidded on ice.
Paul left his coat at school. Paul left it at school.
Secondly, It is used in expressions relating to the weather and to time:
It is very cold.
It rained last night.
It is four o’clock.
It is getting late.
This is sometimes called ‘empty it’ or ‘dummy it’, because it does not refer to
anything in particular. Empty it is also used, with even vaguer reference, in many
other expressions, including:
Hold it! (= ‘Stop’)
Take it easy!
Can you make it to my party tonight?
Pronoun One
The pronoun one has two distinct uses:
Firstly, Substitute one is used as a substitute for a noun that has been mentioned
earlier:
The black coat is nice but the green one is awful.
Here, the pronoun one substitutes for the noun coat (cf. the green coat is awful).
Further examples of substitute one includes:
The problem is a complex one. (one = ‘problem’)
The house was not a modern one, but it was comfortable. (one = ‘house’)
I need a scanner so I’ll just have to buy one. (one = ‘a scanner’)
Substitute one has a plural form, ones:
The black coats are nice but the green ones are awful.
Secondly, Generic one carries a generic meaning corresponding to ‘people in
general’:
One can’t expect miracles.
One loses interest in everything when one has children.
Generic one has a genitive form one’s:
When one is cold, one’s capillaries close to minimise heat loss.
The corresponding reflexive pronoun is oneself:
One could easily find oneself out of a job.
Generic one is largely confined to written English. It can often be replaced by the
less formal you:
You could easily find yourself out of a job.
being repeated again and again in the text so in order to smoothen and ease we use
pronouns. A pronoun can stand for a noun or noun phrase. Sometimes it can stand
for a clause or sentence as well. A word to which pronoun refers back in the
sentence is called antecedent. e.g.
Ali is my friend. He is also my class fellow.
Climbing the hill is not an easy Activity. It needs a lot of energy.
There are several types of pronoun. The major subclasses of pronouns are:
Personal pronouns: I/me, he/him, etc.
Possessive pronouns: my/mine, your/yours, etc.
Reflexive pronouns: myself, yourself, etc
Personal Pronoun
I, we, you, he, (she, it), they are called Personal Pronouns because they stand for
the three persons. First one is the person speaking, second one is the person
spoken to and last one is the person spoken of.
The Pronouns I and we, which denote the person or persons speaking, are said to
be Personal Pronouns of the First Person. The Pronoun you, which denotes the
person or persons spoken to, is said to be a Personal Pronoun of the Second
Person. The pronouns he (she) and they, which denote the person or persons
spoken of, are said to be Personal Pronouns of the Third Person. It, although it
denotes the thing spoken of, is also called a Personal Pronoun of the Third Person.
Quiz: A student asks which is correct: between you and I or between you and me.
What do you say?
Possessive Pronouns
The possessive pronouns exhibit contrasts for person (first person, second person,
or third person) and for number (singular or plural). Like the personal pronouns,
possessive pronouns have gender-based contrasts (masculine, feminine or
Neutral) in the third-person singular. Each possessive pronoun has two distinct
forms, the dependent form and the independent form. Dependent possessives are used before a noun as: This is my car. I’ve borrowed your computer.
She took his/her photograph.
Independent possessives are used without a following noun. They most
commonly occur after of, in independent genitives as:
a friend of mine
this partner of yours
a colleague of his/hers
an uncle of ours
Independent possessives also occur in other positions, especially when the context
makes clear what the pronoun refers to:
John’s car is fast, but mine is cheaper to run.
Mine = My car
You are in my address book, but am I in yours?
Yours = Your address book
Reflexive and Intensive/Emphatic Pronouns
The reflexive and Intensive/Emphatic pronouns end in -self (singular) or -selves
(plural). They exhibit distinctions of person (first person, second person or third
person), and number (singular or plural). The third-person singular reflexives
(himself/herself/itself) show distinctions of gender (masculine, feminine or nonpersonal).
The reflexive pronouns are used to refer back to the subject of the same sentence:
e.g.
Majid was very badly injured and is now unable to feed himself.
That car is in a class all by itself.
Here, himself refers back to Majid, and Itself refers back to The Car, the subjects
of the sentences.
Less commonly, reflexive pronouns are used for emphasis, in such case it will be
called Emphatic or Intensive pronoun. e.g.
The Chancellor mentioned tax cuts, but he himself knows that the time is not
right for reform.
The Queen herself attended the party.
In such cases as mentioned above the reflexives himself and herself co-occur with
the corresponding personal pronoun (subjective case) he and the queen, and in
case it is removed from the sentence the sentence will stand intact. In such cases it is called emphatic/Intensive pronoun. Similarly:
I myself
we ourselves
you yourself
they themselves
she herself
Gender-Neutral Pronouns
English lacks a gender-neutral pronoun in the singular. He is masculine, and she
is feminine, but no pronoun exists to refer to people of unknown or unidentified
sex (it can only be used to refer to objects and animals, not to people). Therefore a
problem arises in sentences such as:
Somebody has left his coat behind.
Clearly, the sex of ‘somebody’ is not known, so there is no way of knowing
whether to use his coat or her coat. Traditionally, the masculine his has been used
in these circumstances, as in the example above.
However, the arbitrary choice of his over her is now felt by many people to be
unacceptably sexist. A common solution is to use his or her (or his/her):
Somebody has left his or her coat behind. Likewise, the subjective pronouns he or
she, he/she (and even s/he) are sometimes used as gender-neutral pronouns:
Encourage your child to read when he or she reaches the age of 3.
However, this can be stylistically irritating, especially when it is repeated: He or she has to satisfy the jury that he or she is right.
A candidate who wishes to enter the school before his or her eighteenth birthday
may be asked to write to state his or her reasons.
Recently, the plural pronouns their (possessive) and they (subjective) are
increasingly being used:
Somebody has left their coat behind.
Encourage your child to read when they reach the age of three.
5 Demonstrative Pronouns
The demonstrative pronouns are this, that, these, those. These pronouns are used
to point out the objects to which they refer. This and that are singular, and are
used with singular nouns:
This was my sister’s bag.
That looks like the car I used to drive.
These and those are plural, and are used with plural nouns:
These are nice shoes, but they look uncomfortable.
Those look like riper than the apples on my tree.
Demonstrative pronouns always identify nouns, whether those nouns are named
specifically or not. For example: “I can’t believe this.” We have no idea what
“this” is, but it’s definitely something the writer cannot believe. It exists, even
though we don’t know what it is.
Demonstrative pronouns are usually used to describe animals, places, or things,
however they can be used to describe people when the person is identified, i.e.,
This sounds like Ali Zafar singing.
Note: Do not confuse demonstrative pronouns with demonstrative adjectives. The
words are identical, but demonstrative adjectives qualify nouns, whereas
demonstrative pronouns stand alone.
Demonstrative pronouns can be used in place of a noun, so long as the noun being
replaced can be understood from the pronoun’s context.
Relative Pronouns
The relative pronouns are: who, whom, whose, which, and that. These pronouns
perform double function; they work as a pronoun and a conjunction. Relative pronouns introduce a relative clause.
That’s the man who lives beside us.
That’s the man whom we met yesterday.
The problem which we’re facing is very serious.
The thing that worries me most is the overdraft.
Who and whom differ in case. Who is subjective?
the man who lives beside us
Whom is objective:
the man whom we met (cf. we met the man)
In formal contexts, and especially in writing, whom is used after a preposition.
the man on whom we rely
the people with whom he used to work
the person to whom it is addressed
In less formal contexts, including everyday speech, whom is often omitted
altogether, and the preposition is moved to the end:
the man we rely on
the people he used to work with
the person it is addressed to
An interrogative pronoun often stands for something that we are not aware of yet,
because we are asking about it. We use these pronouns specifically to ask questions.
These pronouns are special because they all start with “Wh”, which makes them easy to
remember. Do not confuse them with what most school teachers call the “5 W’s – who, what, where,
why, and when,” because in reality, these are not all interrogative pronouns.
The interrogative pronouns that most English speakers are aware of are: whom, whose,
who, what, and which.These are the pronouns that help English speakers find out information. The words
“whatsoever” and “whichever” are also used sometimes, and they are considered
interrogative pronouns as well.
What is your favorite color?
Whose shirt is this?
Whatsoever do you mean by that?
Whom were you speaking with last night?
Which of these two do you prefer?
Distributive Pronoun
Each, either, neither are called Distributive Pronouns because they refer to
persons or things one at a time. For this reason they are always singular and as
such followed by the verb in the singular.
Each of the boys gets a prize.
Each took it in turn.
Either of these roads leads to the railway station.
Either of you can go.
Neither of the accusations is true.
Indefinite Pronoun
An indefinite pronoun does not refer to any specific person, thing or amount. It is
vague and "not definite". Some typical indefinite pronouns are:
all, another, any, anybody/anyone, anything, each, everybody/everyone,
everything, few, many, nobody, none, one, several, some, somebody/
someone
Most indefinite pronouns are either singular or plural. However, some of them can
be singular in one context and plural in another. The most common indefinite
pronouns are listed below, with examples, as singular, plural or singular/plural.
Notice that a singular pronoun takes a singular verb and that any personal
pronoun should also agree (in number and gender). Look at these examples:
Each of the players has a doctor.
One must not praise one’s self.
Similarly, plural pronouns need plural agreement:
Many have expressed their views.
Pronoun It
The pronoun it has two major uses: First, as a personal pronoun it can replace a
third-person singular noun with non-human reference:
The car skidded on ice. It skidded on ice.
Paul left his coat at school. Paul left it at school.
Secondly, It is used in expressions relating to the weather and to time:
It is very cold.
It rained last night.
It is four o’clock.
It is getting late.
This is sometimes called ‘empty it’ or ‘dummy it’, because it does not refer to
anything in particular. Empty it is also used, with even vaguer reference, in many
other expressions, including:
Hold it! (= ‘Stop’)
Take it easy!
Can you make it to my party tonight?
Pronoun One
The pronoun one has two distinct uses:
Firstly, Substitute one is used as a substitute for a noun that has been mentioned
earlier:
The black coat is nice but the green one is awful.
Here, the pronoun one substitutes for the noun coat (cf. the green coat is awful).
Further examples of substitute one includes:
The problem is a complex one. (one = ‘problem’)
The house was not a modern one, but it was comfortable. (one = ‘house’)
I need a scanner so I’ll just have to buy one. (one = ‘a scanner’)
Substitute one has a plural form, ones:
The black coats are nice but the green ones are awful.
Secondly, Generic one carries a generic meaning corresponding to ‘people in
general’:
One can’t expect miracles.
One loses interest in everything when one has children.
Generic one has a genitive form one’s:
When one is cold, one’s capillaries close to minimise heat loss.
The corresponding reflexive pronoun is oneself:
One could easily find oneself out of a job.
Generic one is largely confined to written English. It can often be replaced by the
less formal you:
You could easily find yourself out of a job.
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