English Grammar/Basic Parts of Speech/Pronouns

A pronoun replaces a noun in a sentence. The noun that is replaced is called an antecedent.

Pronouns can be classified in following different ways:

Types of Pronoun

Personal Pronoun

Type		Nominative	Possessive	Objective	Possessive Noun
Singular	First Person	I	my	me	mine
	Second Person	you	your	you	yours
	Third Person	he	his	him	his
		she	her	her	hers
		it	its	it	its
Plural	First Person	we	our	us	ours
	Second Person	you	your	you	yours
	Third Person	they	their	them	theirs
Interrogative		who	whose	whom	whose

Note: The possessive forms my, your, his, her, its, our and their function as adjectives when they modify a noun.

Cases of Personal Pronouns

1. Nominative case - the pronoun is used as a subject or predicate nominative/subjective complement.
   Example:
   I am beautiful.(subject)
   The winner is she.(predicate nominative/subjective complement)
2. Objective case - the pronoun is used as a direct object, indirect object or object of the preposition.
   Example:
   We met them in Florida. (direct object)
   You have to award him the medal. (indirect object)
   Are you finally going out with her? (object of the preposition)
3. Possessive case - the pronoun is used to show ownership or possession.
   Example:
   That folder is mine.
   These paintings are theirs.

Compound Personal Pronouns

Compound personal pronouns are formed by adding -self or -selves to some personal pronouns.

Reflexive Pronoun

Reflexive pronoun may be used as a direct object or indirect object. It usually comes after the verb.

Intensive Pronoun

Intensive pronoun is used to emphasize that the action is done by the antecedent.

List of Reflexive and Intensive Pronouns

Person	Singular	Plural
First Person	myself	ourselves
Second Person	yourself	yourselves
Third Person	himself, herself, itself	themselves

Relative Pronouns

Relative pronouns like that, which, who, whom and whose are used to introduce most adjective clauses and to connect them to the main clause.

• That refers to either a person, animal or thing.
• Which refers to animals or things.
• Who refers to persons. It is usually used when the noun it refers to is the doer of the action or when the noun it refers to is the subject within the clause.
• Whom refers to persons. It is usually used when the noun or pronoun it refers to is the receiver of the action or when the noun or pronoun is used as the object within the clause.
• Whose refers to persons, animals or things. It is used to denote possession.

Demonstrative Pronouns

Demonstrative pronouns like this, that, these and those are used to point out specific persons or things.

Interrogative Pronouns

Interrogative pronouns are used to ask questions. They are who, whom, whose, which and what.

Indefinite Pronouns

Indefinite pronouns are pronouns that do not refer to a particular person or group of persons.

Singular Indefinite Pronouns

another	either	neither	other
anybody	everybody	nobody	somebody
anyone	everyone	no one	someone
anything	everything	nothing	something
each	much	one

Plural Indefinite Pronouns

both

few

many

several

Singular or Plural Indefinite Pronouns

all	enough	most	plenty
any	more	none	some