Pronoun and its kinds

 Pronoun

A Pronoun is a word used instead of a Noun. Words such as I, We, You, He, Him, They etc. are called Pronouns because they are used in place of nouns which we don’t want to repeat in a sentence or in a piece of continuous writing.

Look at these examples.

·         I asked John whether John knew John’s marks

We do not speak or write in this way, repeating the noun ‘John’. We therefore put pronouns in place of ‘John and says:

·         I asked John whether he knew his marks

‘He’ in this sentence stands for ‘John’ and ‘his’(the possessive form of he) for Mohan’s’

Pronouns are of different kinds

i) Personal Pronouns

I, we, you, he, she, it, they are called Personal Pronoun because they stand for three persons, the First Person, the Second Person and the Third Person.

i) the person speaking (I and We are said to be the first Person)

ii) the person spoken to (You is said to the Second Person)

iii) the person spoken of ( He, She It and They are said to be the Third Person)

Here is a chart giving you these pronouns in their ‘Subject’, ‘Object’, Possessive Adjective’ (or Determiner’) and ‘Possessive Pronoun’ forms.

Subject	Object	Possessive Adj. or Determiner	Possessive Pronoun
I	me	My	Mine
We	us	Our	Ours
You (both Sin & Plu)	you	Your	Yours
He	Him	His	His
She	her	Her	Hers
It	it	Its	-----
They	them	Their	Theirs

(note that ‘it’ is not used in the possessive pronoun form)

The uses of Personal Pronouns

a) ‘I” stands for the speaker and is used to refer either to a masculine or a feminine noun

b) ‘We’ is used to refer either to a masculine noun or a feminine noun

c)’You’ is used to refer either to a masculine noun or a feminine noun

d) ‘He’ is used to refer to a masculine noun

e) ‘She’ is used to refer to a feminine noun

f) ‘It’ is used to refer to an animal or a thing, or a child whose sex is not specified

g) ‘They’ is used to refer to masculine or feminine or  neuter nouns according to what is stands for.

ii) Possessive Pronouns

The forms mine, ours, yours, his, hers, theirs are called Possessive Pronouns. They are used to denote the nouns that follow the possessive adjectives my, our, your, his, her and their respectively. Ex. a) That book is hers   b) The idea of yours is excellent

iii) Reflexive Pronouns

When ‘self’ is added to my, your, him, her, it and ‘selves’ to our, your, them, we get what are called Compound Personal Pronouns and are called Reflexive Pronouns. When the action done by the subject turns back upon the subject as,

They hurt themselves

iv) Emphatic Pronouns

Look at the sentences

I wash my clothes myself

Policemen themselves sometimes break the traffic rules.

In these sentences the ‘self’ pronouns are used to emphasize the nouns or pronouns they stand for. They are called Emphatic Pronouns.

iv) Demonstrative Pronouns

In the sentences below this, that, these and those are used not as Demonstative Adjectives (i.e. as Determiners), but as Demonstrative Pronouns. They stand for the things or persons pointed to.

Ex. a) This is the computer my sister gave me

(‘This’ stands for this computer)

v) Indefinite Pronouns

Look at the sentences

a) Some of the boys didn’t take the examination

b)  None of the boys knew the answer to the question

c) The doll is very nice. I buy some for my children

In the sentences above ‘Some’ ‘None’ refer to persons or things in a general way, but do not refer to any person or thing in particular. They are therefore, called Indefinite Pronouns

vi) Distributive Pronouns

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’ is used to denote every one of a number or persons or things taken singly

Either means the one or the other of two

Neither means not the one nor the other of two. It is the negative of either

vii) Relative Pronouns

The words Who, which, whose, which and that are called Relative Pronouns

Look at the sentences

a) I met Ram who had just returned

b) She has found the pen which she lost

In the sentences above the words ‘who’ and ‘which’ are used instead of noun Ram. It, therefore, does the work of a Pronoun. The word who joins or connects two statements. It, therefore, does the work of a conjunction.

viii) Reciprocal Pronouns

Each other and one another are treated as single units. They express mutual or reciprocal relationship, and are therefore called Reciprocal Pronouns. They are used as objects of verbs and of prepositions, as shown in the examples below, but are not used in the subject position

a) The two sons quarreled with each other

b) The people of the village used to help one another at harvest time.