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It can
be used as a subject or an object (direct, indirect, object of the preposition) in a text/speech, and
can serve as a good way to help you avoid repetition of specific nouns.
Personal, Possessive & Indefinite Pronouns. Personal Pronouns. A personal pronoun can
refer to the person or people speaking ("first person"), spoken to ("second person") or
spoken about ("third person"). Personal pronouns have distinct forms for each of these three
"persons", as well as for singular and plural: ...Jun 4, 1999
Types of Pronouns
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Personal Pronouns
Personal pronouns can be the subject of a clause or sentence. They are: I, he,
she, it, they, we, and you. Example: “They went to the store.”
Personal pronouns can also be objective, where they are the object of a verb,
preposition, or infinitive phrase. They are: me, her, him, it, you, them, and us.
Example: “David gave the gift to her.”
Subjective
Subject pronouns are often (but not always) found at the beginning of a
sentence. More precisely, the subject of a sentence is the person or thing that
lives out the verb.
I owe that person $3,000. – I am living out that debt. I is the subject
pronoun.
He and I had a fight. – This sentence has two subjects
because he and I were both involved in the fight.
He broke my kneecaps. – You get the idea.
To him, I must now pay my children's college funds. – If you'll notice, the
verb in this sentence – the action – is "pay." Although I is not at the
beginning of the sentence, it is the person living out the action and is,
therefore, the subject.
Objective
By contrast, objects and object pronouns indicate the recipient of an action or
motion. They come after verbs and prepositions (to, with, for, at, on, beside,
under, around, etc.).
The guy I borrowed money from showed me a crowbar and told me to
pay him immediately.
I begged him for more time.
He said he'd given me enough time already.
I tried to dodge the crowbar, but he hit me with it anyway.
Just then, the police arrived and arrested us.
Subject vs. Object Pronouns
There is often confusion over which pronouns you should use when you are one
half of a dual subject or object. For example, should you say:
"Me and him had a fight." or "He and I had a fight?"
"The police arrested me and him." or "The police arrested he and I?"
Some people will tell you that you should always put the other person first and
refer to yourself as "I" because it's more proper, but those people are wrong. You
can put the other person first out of politeness, but you should always use the
correct pronouns (subject or object) for the sentence.
A good test to decide which one you need is to try the sentence with one
pronoun at a time. Would you say, "Me had a fight?" Of course not. You'd say, "I
had a fight." What about, "Him had a fight?" No, you'd say, "He had a fight." So
when you put the two subjects together, you get, "He and I had a fight." The
same rule applies to the other example. You wouldn't say, "The police arrested he," or,
"The police arrested I." You would use "him" and "me."
Possessive Pronouns
Possessive pronouns show ownership. The term covers both possessive
pronouns and possessive adjectives.
Absolute possessive pronouns – mine, yours, ours, theirs, his, hers, its – are truly pronouns
because they refer to a previously named or understood noun. They stand alone, not
followed by any other noun. Take a look at this sentence:
Pronominal possessive adjectives include: my, your, our, their, his, her and its. They are
used as pronouns as they refer to an understood noun, showing possession by that noun of
something. They are technically adjectives, though, because they modify a noun that follows
them.
Relative Pronouns
These pronouns are used to connect a clause or phrase to a noun or pronoun.
These are: who, whom, which, whoever, whomever, whichever, and that.
The driver who ran the stop sign was careless.
Intensive Pronouns
These pronouns are used to emphasize a noun or pronoun. These are: myself,
himself, herself, themselves, itself, yourself, yourselves, and ourselves.
He himself is his worst critic.
Demonstrative Pronouns
There are five demonstrative pronouns: these, those, this, that, and such. They
focus attention on the nouns that are replacing.
Such was his understanding.
Those are totally awesome.
Interrogative Pronouns
These pronouns are used to begin a question: who, whom, which, what,
whoever, whomever, whichever, and whatever.
What are you bringing to the party?
Reflexive Pronouns
There is one more type of pronoun, and that is the reflexive pronoun. These are
the ones that end in “self” or "selves." They are object pronouns that we use
when the subject and the object are the same noun.
I told myself not to spend all my money on new shoes.
My friend really hurt himself when he tripped on the stairs.
We also use them to emphasize the subject.
Usually, the guy I borrowed the money from will send an employee to
collect the money, but since I owed so much, he himself came to my house.
Examples of Pronouns in Context
Now see if you can find all the pronouns and possessive adjectives in this
paragraph:
No matter what your teachers may have taught you about pronouns, the I's
don't always have it. If your teachers ever warned you about the evils of
gambling, however, they were right about that. You don't want someone
breaking your kneecaps with his crowbar; it will hurt, the police might arrest
you, and you may never forgive yourself.
The underlined words in the sample sentences below show how personal
pronouns are used.
Ffirst-Person Pronouns
Glossary of Grammatical and Rhetorical Terms
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Examples of first-person pronouns in a song composed by George Harrison and performed by the
Beatles on the album Let It Be (1970). (Keystone/Getty Images)
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by Richard Nordquist
In English grammar, first-person pronouns are pronouns that refer to the speaker or
writer (singular) or to a group that includes the speaker or writer (plural).
In addition, my and our are the singular and plural first-person possessive determiners.
"He shines the light along the strand to find our footprints and follow them back, but the
only prints he can find are mine. 'You must have carried me there,' he says.
"I laugh at the thought of my carrying him, at the impossibility, then realize that it was a
joke, and I got it.
"When the moon comes out again, he turns the lamp off and we easily find the
path we took through the dunes."
(Claire Keegan, "Foster." The Best American Short Stories 2011, ed. by Geraldine Brooks.
Houghton Mifflin, 2011)
"Our people have a saying 'Ours is ours, but mine is mine.' Every town and village
struggles at this momentous epoch in our political evolution to possess that of which it
can say: 'This is mine.' We are happy today that we have such an invaluable possession in
the person of our illustrious son and guest of honor."
(Chinua Achebe, No Longer at Ease. Heinemann, 1960)
"I took her back to my room, where we passed a celibate night, Clara sleeping fitfully in
my arms. In the morning she asked me to be a sweetheart and fetch her canvases and
drawings and notebooks and suitcases from Le Grand Hôtel Excelsior."
(Mordecai Richler, Barney's Version. Chatto & Windus, 1997)
"It is one thing to believe in a nice old God who will take good care of us from a lofty
position of power which we ourselves could never begin to attain."
(M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled. Simon & Schuster, 1978)
"[I]nside my soul I don't conform: can't conform. They would all like to kill the non-
conforming me. Which is me myself."
(D.H. Lawrence, The Boy in the Bush, 1924)
- "In your papers, the focus is on the ideas—not on you. Consequently, you should limit
your use of first person pronouns such as 'I.' In formal papers, you are not to speak
directly to the reader, so you should not use 'you' or any other second person pronouns."
(Mark L. Mitchell, Janina M. Jolley, and Robert P. O'Shea, Writing for Psychology, 3rd
ed. Wadsworth, 2010)
I will work hard to make sure that the transition from myself to the next President is a
good one.
That was an unstylish, though not incorrect, use of 'myself'; the better word is 'me.' Use
'myself' as an intensifier (I myself prefer 'me'), as a reflexive ('I misspoke myself,' as
press secretaries say), but not as a cutesy turning away from the harsh 'me.'"
(William Safire, The New York Times Magazine, Feb. 1, 1981)
. . . with Dorothy Thompson and myself among the speakers — Alexander Woolcott,
letter, 11 Nov. 1940
There are also two captions for Hokinson, one by myself and one by my secretary
— James Thurber, letter, 20 Aug. 1948
Indeed I hope that you will have time, amongst your numerous engagements, to have a
meal with my wife and myself — T.S. Eliot, letter, 7 May 1957 . . .
The evidence should make it plain that the practice of substituting myself or other
reflexive pronouns for ordinary personal pronouns is not new . . . and is not rare. It is
true that many of the examples are from speech and personal letters, suggesting
familiarity and informality. But the practice is by no means limited to informal contexts.
Only the use of myself as sole subject of a sentence seems to be restricted . . .."
(Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage. Merriam-Webster, 1994)
Mine and My
- "I plucked pink blossoms from mine apple-tree
And wore them all that evening in my hair."
(Christina Georgina Rossetti, "An Apple Gathering," 1863)
- "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."
(Julia Ward Howe, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," 1862)
"In OE, the form min . . . had been used both adjectivally and pronominally.
In ME, my (or mi) began to appear as the adjective form used before a word beginning
with a consonant, while min was used before words beginning with a vowel and as the
absolute (or pronominal) form. In EMnE [Early Modern English], my generalized as the
adjective form in all environments, and minebecame reserved for pronominal functions,
the present distribution of the two."
(C.M. Millward, A Biography of the English Language, 2nd ed. Harcourt Brace, 1996)
ronouns, pronouns, pronouns...