Pronouns

Pronouns are words used to replace nouns. The noun a pronoun replaces is called its antecedent. There are five different types of pronouns: personal, relative, demonstrative, indefinite, and interrogative. Except for personal pronouns, it can be difficult to remember what type of pronoun a word is, and sometimes the same pronoun can be a different type depending on how it is used. Remember, if it acts like a noun but you can't use "a" or "the" with it, it just might be a pronoun.

Personal pronouns

Personal pronouns are the most familiar type of pronoun. They stand in for specific persons, places, and things. Personal pronouns can be first, second, or third person; they can be singular or plural; they can be objective or subjective case, and they can be possessive, reflexive, or intensive. intensive.

Oddly enough, though this sounds complicated, most people understand personal pronouns very easily.

	Subjective		Objective		Possessive		Reflexive
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
First person	I	we	me	us	my/mine	our/ours	myself	ourselves
Second person	you	you	you	you	your/yours	your/yours	yourself	yourselves
Third person	he she it	they	him her it	them	his/his her/hers its/its	their/theirs	himself herself itself	themselves

Relative pronouns

Relative pronouns join dependent clauses to independent clauses. They include who, whose, whom, which, and that.

Deciding whether to use which or that causes problems for many people. Basically, we don't use which for people. Also, we generally use that for restrictive clauses and which for nonrestrictive clauses. This is one of those rules Dr. T. generally ignores, but it matters deeply to many people. When in doubt, you can often leave the word that out of your sentence without noticing anything different, such as in the previous sentence ("This is one of those rules that Dr. T. generally ignores.")

Demonstrative pronouns

Demonstrative pronouns point specific things out. They include this, that, these, and those.

Indefinite pronouns

Indefinite pronouns resemble nouns, but they are incredibly general and you cannot use the articles a or the with them. These pronouns include another, any, anybody, anyone, anything, both, each, either, everybody, everyone, everything, many, neither, nobody, none, no one, one, other, others, some, somebody, and someone.

Interrogative pronouns

Interrogative pronouns ask questions. They include who, whom, whose, which, and what

For more detailed information, see the pronoun sheet handed out in class. .