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Lesson 6; Pronouns: Kinds of Pronouns

1. Posted by Bertha in Grammar |
2. November 19th, 2009 |
3. Comments

        

Pronoun is that parts of speech used instead of a Noun.

Nouns refer to a thing or a person and give name to it; Pronouns also refer to a thing or a person, but don’t give a name.

Instead of repeating a noun, which has been already understood or mentioned earlier, we often put another word, and this word is knows as a Pronoun. Pro means “instead of or for”.

Pronouns are used to avoid the repetition of nouns.

The significance of Pronouns is best understood by trying to do with no Pronouns.

It would sound so awkward; also being so boring, if we use the same Noun repeatedly. We can save this awkwardness by using Pronouns:-

Richard saw a spider on the table, this spider Richard thought may hurt Richard, unless Richard killed the spider with a paper-weight, this paper-weight Richard had in Richard’s hand.

The nouns in the above sentence can be replaced by Pronouns and it can be better expressed as below:-

Richard saw a spider on the table, which he thought may hurt him, unless he killed it with a paper-weight, which he had in his hand.

In the above sentence, ‘he’ and ‘him’ are Pronouns and used for Richard; the first ‘which’ stands for ‘spider’; the second ‘which’ is used for ‘paper-weight’; and ‘it’ is for ‘spider’.

Therefore, the primary use of a Pronoun is to stop repetition of Noun.

There are four types of Pronouns:

1)      Personal Pronouns: I, you, he, she etc.

2)      Relative Pronouns: who, which, as, that etc.

3)      Demonstrative Pronouns: that, this, one, such etc.

4)      Interogative Pronouns: which? who? what?

1) PERSONAL PRONOUNS

The pronouns stand for three persons are denoted as Personal Pronouns, such as -

a)      The First, which stands for the person speaking; like I, we.

b)      The Second, which stands for the person spoken to: like you.

c)      The Third, which stands for the thing or person spoken of; like it, he, she etc.

The First Person, Feminine or Masculine

Singular	Plural
I	We
Me	Us
My, Mine	Our, Ours

The Second Person, Feminine or Masculine

Singular	Plural
Thou	Ye or you
Thee	You
Thine, Thy	Your, Yours

The Third Person of Every Gender

SINGULAR	SINGULAR	SINGULAR	PLURAL
Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	All Genders
He	She	It	They
Him	Her	It	Them
His	Her	Its	Their, Theirs

While, any of the above-mentioned pronouns show what or who is the possessor or owner of a thing, the pronouns are then called Possessives. Such pronouns are used 1) when leaded by preposition “of”; 2) when separated from a noun by a verb; 3) when the noun is not spoken:-

a) That pen of yours is broken.

b) This dress is yours. That pencil is mine.

c) My pen and yours (your pen) are both broken.

When “self” is added to a pronoun, the pronoun is then denoted as Reflexive.

I. The First Person

Singular	Plural
Myself	Ourselves

II. The Second Person

Singular	Plural
Thyself	Yourselves

III. The Third Person

Singular	Singular	Singular	Plural
Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	All Genders
Himself	Herself	Itself	Themselves

2. RELATIVE PRONOUNS

The pronouns relate to other pronoun or noun, are called Relative Pronouns.

The pronoun or noun going before a Relative Pronoun is called an Antecedent.

Relative pronouns are mostly expressed by the word “which” or “who”.

Singular and Plural	Singular and Plural
Masculine and Feminine	Neuter
Who Whom Whose	Which Which Whose or Of which

Examples of Relative Pronouns

a)      She lost the pen which I bought.

b)      I sold the car which I used for many years.

c)       That is the person whom I talked yesterday.

d)      We love those people who love us.

The above words in Italics are examples of relative pronouns.

N.B:  a) The word “which” is generally used for all sorts of living things only except men and women as well as things with no life.

b) The word “who” is generally used for men and women and is so of the feminine, masculine or common gender.

c) The Relative Pronoun is of the same gender, person and number as Antecedent.

3) DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUNS

A Pronoun that points to or demonstrates a noun is called a Demonstrative Pronoun. A demonstrative pronoun is used for the noun going before it. The noun is denoted as the Antecedent to that demonstrative pronoun.

The pronouns belong to the Demonstrative are this, these, that, those; such; one, none, ones.

This, these, that, those – Uses of the mentioned words as pronouns are explained below:

Play and work are both necessary for being well; this (= work) gives energy and that (= play) gives rest.

In this sentence, the word “this” refers to the latter, i.e. work and the word “that” refers to the former, i.e. play. You can see that ‘this’ or ‘that’ does not specify what or which work or play is referred; unlike Demonstrative Adjectives.

Such – The word ‘Such’ may be substituted for the noun in any number.

A)    He is the judge recruited to hear this case and as such (= as a recruited judge) he won’t talk to you before trial. (Singular).

B)     Presidents are made such (= the ministers) by the law and thus must be obeyed. (Plural).

One, none, and ones – While the antecedent (the noun) is in its Singular Number, ‘one’ is used. However, if the antecedent is in Plural Number, ‘ones’ is used. ‘None’ is the shortened form of ‘not one’.

A)    He won the first prize last year; but this year he did not win one (= a prize). (Singular).

B)     There are fifteen lazy students and twenty studious ones (= students) in our class. (Plural).

C)    She has a pen, but he has none (= not a pen).

Indefinite Demonstrative Pronouns

Sometimes we use Demonstrative pronouns indefinitely, i.e. we do not use them as substitutes for some nouns mentioned expressly, but for some nouns that can be easily understood from idiom or the context.

a)      One – This pronoun is used in the sense of any individual or every individual.

One must take care of one’s well-being =

A man (any and every individual) must take care of his well-being.

b) They – This pronoun is used for men in common, or a person whose name is deliberately hidden.

1)      They say (men in general) that honestly is the best policy.

2)      He told me (= a person whom I want to hide, told me) that you were the culprit.

4) INTERROGATIVE PRONOUNS

Pronouns which ask questions are Interrogative Pronouns.

a)      Who told this?

b)      Which of these oranges is rotten?

c)      Whose pen is this?

d)      How are you?

e)      What did you ask?

f)        Of whom did you speak?