Pronoun

A **pronoun** is traditionally a part of speech in grammar, but many modern linguists call it a type of noun. In English, pronouns are words such as _me, she, his, them, herself, each other, it, what_.

Pronouns are often used to take the place of a noun, to avoid repeating the noun. For example, instead of saying
- ***Tom*** has a new dog. ***Tom*** has named ***the dog*** Max, and ***Tom*** lets ***the dog*** sleep by ***Tom***'s bed.
it is easier to say
- **Tom** has a new dog. **He** has named **him** Max and **he** lets **him** sleep by **his** bed.

When a pronoun replaces a noun, the noun is called the antecedent. For example, in the sentence: _The dog **that** was walking down the street_, the relative pronoun is the word **that** referring back to the antecedent, the word 'dog'.  In the sentence _The spy who loved me_, the relative pronoun is the word 'who' and its antecedent is the word 'spy'.

## Differences and similarities to nouns

Pronouns are different from common nouns because pronouns normally do not come after _article_s or other _determiner_s. For example, people do not say "the it". Pronouns rarely come after adjectives. They are also different because many of them change depending on how they are used. For example, "we" is a 'subject' in grammar, but the word changes to _us_ when used as an object.

Pronouns are the same as nouns because they both change for number (singular & plural), case (subject, object, possessive, etc.), and gender (male, female, animate, inanimate, etc.) Nouns and pronouns can be used in almost all the same places in sentences, and they name the same kinds of things: people, objects, etc. Even though they can not normally come after determiners, or adjectives, neither can proper nouns.

## Kinds of pronouns

There are different kinds of pronouns: personal, reciprocal, interrogative, and relative.
|i|personal|**you** love **them**|**Your** sister loves **herself**|
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
|ii|reciprocal|we like **each other**|we are looking at **one another**|
|iii|interrogative|**who** is there?|**what** happened?|
|iv|relative|the person **who** saw it|the time **which** you told me|

### Personal pronouns in English

This table shows all the personal pronouns in English that are commonly used today.

|colspan="3"||Subject|Object|Possessive|Reflexive|||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|I|me|my, mine|myself|||||
|you|you|your, yours|yourself|||||
|they|them|their, theirs|themself|||||
|she|her|her, hers|herself|||||
|he|him|his|himself|||||
|it|it|its|itself|||||
|we|us|our, ours|ourselves|||||
|you|you|your, yours|yourselves|||||
|rowspan="3"|they|rowspan="3"|them|rowspan="3"|their, theirs|rowspan="3"|themselves|

A subject pronoun can replace a noun that is the subject of a sentence. Refer to the table above; the subject pronouns are: **I**, **You**, **He**, **She**, **It**, **We**, **They**. An object pronoun can replace a noun that is the object of a sentence. A possessive pronoun shows who or what a noun belongs to.

Another type of personal pronoun is called the 'reflexive pronoun'. Reflexive pronouns are the words ending in '-self' or '-selves', such as: _myself, itself, themselves_. One of the primary functions of reflexive pronouns is for situations in which a single agent is both the doer of the action and the receiver of the action. For example, if I cut my finger, we don't typically say "I cut me." in English; we use the reflexive pronoun and say "I cut myself."

"It" and its other forms "its", and "itself" only refer to objects, not people. "They" and its other forms "them", "their", and "theirs" can be used as a singular, for a person whose gender is unknown at the time, or for a person who does not identify with either the "she/her" or "he/him" pronouns. For example: "The patient will be told how much _they_ will be required to pay."