PRONOUNS

The personal pronouns in the English language can have various forms according to gender, number, person, and case. Modern English is a language with very little noun or adjective inflection, to the point where some authors describe it as analytic, but the Modern English system of personal pronouns has preserved most of the inflectional complexity of Old English and Middle English. Unlike other nouns, which are undeclined for case except for possession (woman/woman's), English pronouns have a number of forms, depending on their grammatical role in a sentence: a subjective case (I/we/etc.), used as the subject of a verb. an objective case (me/us/etc.), used as the object of a verb or preposition. The same forms are also used as disjunctive pronouns. a reflexive form (myself/ourselves etc.), which is preceded by the noun or pronoun to which it refers (its antecedent) within the same clause (for example, She cut herself). Frequent errors exist when a reflexive pronoun is inserted incorrectly for "me" or "I" (error: It was written by John, Ann, and myself when it should read, It was written by John, Ann, and me and error: John, Ann, and myself wrote it when it should read, John, Ann, and I wrote it). The same reflexive forms also are used as intensive pronouns (for example, She made the dress herself). two possessive forms, used to indicate the possessor of another noun. The first group (my/our/etc.) are used as determiners (possessive determiners, also called possessive adjectives), and the second (mine/ours/etc.) as pronouns or predicate adjectives.Contents 1 Basic personal pronouns of modern English 2 Full list of personal pronouns 2.1 First person pronouns 2.1.1 I and me 2.1.2 My and mine, thy and thine 2.1.3 We 2.1.4 Ourself 2.2 Second person pronoun 2.2.1 You 2.2.2 Ye 2.2.3 Thou 2.2.4 Other second person pronouns 2.3 Third person pronouns 2.3.1 Third person singular 2.3.2 Third person plural 3 See also 4 References
1

Basic personal pronouns of modern English The basic personal pronouns of modern English are shown below. Personal pronouns in standard Modern English Singular Plural Subject Object Reflexive Subject Object Reflexive First I me myself we us ourselves Second you you yourself you you yourselves Third Masculine he him himself they them themselves Feminine she her herself Neuter it it itself Full list of personal pronouns The following table shows the full list of English personal pronouns and possessive determiners, including archaic and dialectal forms. Nonstandard, informal and archaic forms are in italics. personal pronoun possessive pronoun possessive determiner subjective objective reflexive first-person singular I me myself mine my mine (before vowel) me (esp. BrE) plural we us ourselves ourself ours our second-person singular standard (archaic formal) you you yourself yours your archaic informal thou thee thyself thine thy thine (before vowel) plural standard you you all you you all yourselves yours your archaic ye you yourselves yours your nonstandard or informal y'all youse etc.[nb 1] y'all youse y'all's selves y'all's y'all's third-person singular masculine he him himself his his feminine she her herself hers her neuterit it itself its its generic/epicene (formal) one one oneself one's generic/epicene (nonstandard) they them themself, themselves theirs their plural they them themselves theirs their
2

^ Other variants include: yous, you/youse guys, you/youse gals, you-uns, yis, yinz; possessives: you(r) guys's, you(r) gals's, yous's For further archaic forms, and information on the evolution of the personal pronouns of English, see Old English pronouns. First person pronouns Main articles: I and me I and me In modern English, me is sometimes used in colloquial speech as the predicative of the copula, occurring when the subject is the speaker. See It is I/It is me for a more detailed discussion. In some dialects of English, such as Caribbean English, me may be used as a subject, in place of I.[citation needed] My and mine, thy and thine Main articles: my, mine, thy, and thine Historically, my comes from a reduction of mine, and well after the emergence of my, mine continued to be used instead of my before words beginning with vowel sounds (e.g., the first line of The Battle Hymn of the Republic). Similarly with thy and thine. We Main article: we In English, the first-person plural pronoun, we, is used in both the inclusive sense (you and I) and exclusive sense (someone else and I but not you). It's also used as a majestic plural. e.g.: Inclusive use with the speaker: We can all go to the zoo today. This contrasts with exclusive we, which excludes the person being spoken to, e.g.: We mean to stop your evil plans! Majestic plural: We are not amused Ourself Main article: ourself Ourself is used when we is semantically singular, but grammatically plural, as in the royal we and in the editorial we, however, there is the reflexive example of, "We, ourselves, are not pleased!" Second person pronoun You Main article: you
3

The only common distinction between singular and plural you is in the reflexive and emphatic forms. You and its variants can sometimes be used in a generic sense. See Generic you. Ye Main article: ye (pronoun) Historically, you was an object pronoun, and ye was its subject counterpart; today, you fills both roles in Standard English, though some dialects use ye for the two roles, and some use ye as an apocopated or clitic form of you. Thou Main article: thou Between 1600 and 1800, the various second-person singular forms of thou began to pass out of common usage in most places, except in poetry, archaic-style literature, public prayer, and descriptions of other languages' pronouns. Thou refers to one person who is familiar, as in a friend or family, and also for a person who is being insulted or disrespected (since the formal form implies a degree of respect). Also, as in other European languages, the familiar form is used (presumably as for family and intimates) when speaking to God in prayer. Almost all forms of thou have disappeared from Standard Modern English, although a few dialects retain them. Thou still exists in parts of England, Scotland, and in some Christian religious communities. Other second person pronouns Main articles: y'all, yinz, and yous While formal Standard English uses you for both singular and plural, many dialects use various special forms for the plural, such as y'all (short for "you all"), you guys, yinz (short for "you ones"), and yous (also spelled youse). Corresponding reflexive and possessive pronouns are often used as well. In Scotland, yous is often used for the second person plural (particularly in the Central Belt area). However, in some parts of the country, ye is used for the plural you. In older times and in some other places today, ye is the nominative case and you is the accusative case. Some English dialects generalized ye, while standard English generalized you. Some dialects use ye as a clipped or weak form of you. Third person pronouns Third person singular It and its are normally used to refer to an inanimate object or abstract concept. The masculine pronouns, he and his are used to refer to male persons, while the feminine pronouns, she and her are used to refer to female persons; however babies and young children of indeterminate sex may sometimes be referred to as it (e.g. a child needs its mother).[1]

Though animals are often referred to as it, he and she are sometimes used for animals when the animal's sex is known and is of interest, particularly for higher animals, especially pets and other domesticated animals.[1] Inanimate objects with which humans have a close relationship, such as ships, are sometimes referred to as she.[1] Countries considered as political, rather than geographical, entities are sometimes referred to as she.[1] This may also be extended to towns. One is used in formal English to refer to an indeterminate person; in informal usage, English speakers often use you instead of one; for example "If one is kind to others..." becomes "If you're kind to others...". Third person plural Historically the forms they, their, and them are of Scandinavian origin (from the Viking invasions and settlement in northeastern England during the Danelaw period from the 9th to the 11th centuries).[2] The third person plural form 'em is believed to be a survival of the late Old English form heom, which appears as hem in Chaucer, and has apparently lost its aspiration due to being used as an unstressed form. The forms of they are also sometimes used with grammatically or semantically singular antecedents, though it is a matter of some dispute whether and when such usage is acceptable. When this is the case, they takes a plural verb, but themselves with a singular sense is often changed to themself. Although grammarians and usage writers often condemn the use of the "singular they" when the gender is unknown or unimportant, this is often used, both in speech and in writing (e.g. "If a customer requires help, they should contact..."). In fact, a consistent pattern of usage can be traced at least as far back as Shakespeare, and possibly even back to Middle English. It avoids awkward constructions such as he or she. This usage is authorised and preferred by the Australian Government Manual of Style for official usage in government documents. See Singular they. The use of the "singular they" can often be avoided by thinking ahead and rephrasing the whole sentence. Disjunctive pronoun A disjunctive pronoun is a stressed form of a personal pronoun reserved for use in isolation or in certain syntactic contexts. Examples and usage Disjunctive pronominal forms are typically found in the following environments. The examples are taken from French, which uses the disjunctive first person
5

singular pronoun moi. The (sometimes colloquial) English translations illustrate similar uses of me as a disjunctive form. in syntactically unintegrated disjunct (or "dislocated") positions Les autres s'en vont, mais moi, je reste. The others are leaving, but me, I'm staying. in elliptical constructions ("sentence fragments") with no verb (e.g. short answers) Qui veut du gteau ? Moi. "Who wants cake? Me. Il est plus g que moi. He is older than me. in a coordination with a noun phrase or another pronoun Mes parents et moi arrivons dans une heure. Me and my parents are arriving in an hour. in the main clause of a cleft sentence C'est moi que vous cherchez. It's me that you're looking for. after a preposition. Comptez sur moi. Count on me. Disjunctive pronouns are often semantically restricted. For example, in a language with grammatical gender, there may be a tendency to use masculine and feminine disjunctive pronouns primarily for referring to animate entities. Si l'on propose une bonne candidate, je voterai pour elle. If someone proposes a good candidate, I'll vote for her. Si l'on propose une bonne loi, *je voterai pour elle. If someone proposes a good law, I'll vote for her (it). "It's me" Main article: Subject complement#It is I/It is me In some languages, a personal pronoun has a form called a disjunctive pronoun, which is used when it stands on its own, or with only a copula, such as in answering to the question "Who wrote this page?" The natural answer for most English speakers in this context would be "me" (or "It's me"), parallel to moi (or C'est moi) in French. Unlike in French, however, where such constructions are considered standard, English pronouns used in this way have caused dispute. Some grammarians have argued and persuaded some educators that the correct answer should be "I" or "It is I" because "is" is a linking verb and "I" is a predicate nominative, and up until a few centuries ago spoken English used pronouns in the subjective case in such sentences. However, since English has lost noun inflection and now relies on word order, using the subjective case me after the verb be like other verbs seems very natural to modern speakers. The phrase "It is I" historically
6

came from the Middle English "It am I" and the change from "am" to "is" was also a step towards fixing the SVO word order. Generic antecedent Generic antecedents are representatives of classes, indicated by a reference in ordinary language (most often a pronoun), where gender is typically unknown or irrelevant.[1] These mostly arise in generalizations and are particularly common in abstract, theoretical or strategic discourse. Frequently, theories or strategies involving generic antecedents require consideration of individuals when designing experiments, or personalizing marketing approaches. The question of appropriate style for expressing such generic singulars in the English language became politicized in the 1970s.[2] Gender-neutral pronoun A gender-neutral pronoun is a pronoun that is not associated with any gender. It designates two distinct grammatical phenomena, the first being pronouns/periphrastics that have been assigned nontraditional meanings in modern times out of a concern for gender equity, and the second being genderless pronouns that occur traditionally in human languages. In some languages notably most Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic and a number of Niger-Congo languages some personal pronouns intrinsically distinguish male from female; the selection of a pronoun necessarily specifies, at least to some extent, the gender of what is referred. Traditionally, the masculine form has been taken to be the markless form, that is the form to be used unless it is known to be inappropriate. This has dictated the masculine pronoun in cases such as reference to an indefinite person, for example: "If anybody comes, tell him" reference to a group containing men and women, for example French: Vos parents sont arrivs ils taient en avance. ("Your parents have arrived they were early.") Since as early as 1795,[1] this property has led to the call for gender-neutral pronouns. The SapirWhorf hypothesis is a common justification,[citation needed] in addition to humanist and pluralistic reasons,[citation needed] for applying gender-neutral pronouns to the English language. Attempts to invent pronouns for this purpose date back at least to 1850.[1] All[citation needed] languages allow the speaker to specify whether one is talking about a male or female, but some languages do not require the speaker to make that
7

choice as an intrinsic part of the language.[2] In some languages, pronouns do not distinguish between genders, so gender equity of pronouns is not relevant. Gender-specific pronoun A language has 'gender-specific pronouns' when personal pronouns have different forms according to the gender of their referents. The English language has three gender-specific pronouns in the 3rd. person singular, whose declined forms are also gender-specific: he (masculine), she (feminine), and it (neuter, used for objects, abstractions, and most animals). The other English pronouns (I, you, they...) do not make gender distinctions; i.e., they are genderless or gender-neutral. Old English pronouns The English language once had an extensive declension system similar to Latin, modern German or Icelandic. Old English distinguished between the nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive cases; and for strongly declined adjectives and some pronouns also a separate instrumental case (which otherwise and later completely coincided with the dative). In addition, the dual was distinguished from the more modern singular and plural.[1] Declension was greatly simplified during the Middle English period, when accusative and dative pronouns merged into a single objective pronoun. Nouns in Modern English no longer decline for case, except in a sense for possessive, and for remnants of the former system in a few pronouns. "Who" and "whom", "he" and "him", "she" and "her", etc. are remnants of both the old nominative versus accusative and also of nominative versus dative. In other words, "her" (for example) serves as both the dative and accusative version of the nominative pronoun "she". In Old English as well as modern German and Icelandic as further examples, these cases had distinct pronouns. This collapse of the separate case pronouns into the same word is one of the reasons grammarians consider the dative and accusative cases to be extinct in English neither is an ideal term for the role played by "whom". Instead, the term objective is often used; that is, "whom" is a generic objective pronoun which can describe either a direct or an indirect object. The nominative case, "who", is called simply the subjective. The information formerly conveyed by having distinct case forms is now mostly provided by prepositions and word order.

Modern English morphologically distinguishes only one case, the possessive case which some linguists argue is not a case at all, but a clitic . With only a few pronominal exceptions, the objective and subjective always have the same form. One (pronoun) One is a pronoun in the English language. It is a gender neutral, third-person singular (though slightly anomalous, see reflexivity of one below) pronoun, commonly used in English prose. It is equivalent to the French pronoun on (from "homme", french for man), the German man, and the Spanish uno. Personal pronoun Personal pronouns are pronouns used as substitutes for proper or common nouns. All known human languages have personal pronouns. English personal pronouns English in common use today has seven personal pronouns: first-person singular (I) first-person plural (we) second-person singular and plural (you) third-person singular human or animate male (he) third-person singular human or animate female (she) third-person singular inanimate (it) third-person plural (they) Each pronoun has up to five forms: A form used as the subject of a finite verb (I/we) as cited above. An objective or oblique form (me/us/etc.) used as the object of a verb or of a preposition A reflexive form (myself/ourselves/etc.) which replaces the objective-case form in referring to the same entity as the subject. And two possessive forms (my/our/etc. and mine/ours/etc.). These are used to stand for the possessor of another noun one that is used as a determiner, and one that is used as a pronoun or a predicate adjective. The former are sometimes not included among the pronouns, since they do not act as nouns, but have a role closer to that of adjectives. Nevertheless, the term "pronoun" is frequently applied to both, at least informally. The two sets of pronouns are sometimes distinguished with the terms "possessive determiners" or "possessive adjectives", and "possessive pronouns", respectively.
9

Conclusion In standard usage in English, every verb should have an explicit subject, except for an imperative verb (a command) where the subject is always "you" (singular/plural), even when the context is already understood, or could easily be understood by reading the sentences that follow. Therefore, either an explicit noun, personal pronoun, relative pronoun, demonstrative pronoun, interrogative pronoun, indefinite pronoun, reflexive pronoun, possessive pronoun or correlative pronoun has to be supplied as the subject of a non-imperative verb. Personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, reflexive pronouns and possessive pronouns typically also have explicit antecedents when in the third person. Therefore one does not normally use the word "he" to refer to somebody or "this" to refer to something if the person reading or hearing the phrase does not know to whom one is referring. However, once someone or something has been explicitly mentioned and can be easily identified as the subject, the third person personal pronoun is usually used in place of it. Thus the subject is often made explicit at its first occurrence in a paragraph, and subsequently substituted with its personal pronoun. In addition, personal pronouns must be in agreement with the correct gender and number of people or objects being described. Using the word "it" in English to refer to a person, for example, is usually considered extremely derogatory. It is generally not accepted to use a singular version of a pronoun for a plural noun, and vice versa. An exception is the informal use of "they" to refer to one person when sex is unknown: "If somebody took my book, they'd better give it back" (see singular they). Apart from "I" which is always capitalised, personal pronouns are generally lowercase letters unless they are at the beginning of a sentence, unlike a proper noun for which the first letter is capitalized. One notable exception is in some translations of the Christian Bible, in which the first letter of the personal pronouns referring to either Jesus or God are capitalized. In French, pronouns include "je", "nous", "tu", "vous", "ils", "elles", "lui", "toi", "moi", etc. There are different pronouns used for different genders and numbers of people, and unlike English where "them" and "they" are used for every object whether it is masculine or feminine, in French the plural forms vary according to gender. In addition, in French, different pronouns are used for indirect objects of a sentence than direct objects.

10

VISOKA EKONOMSKA SKOLA STRUKOVNIH STUDIJA PEC U LEPOSAVICU

Smer: Spoljnotrgovinsko poslovanje i carinski menadzment

SEMINARSKI RAD
Predmet: Engleski jezik II Tema: Zamenice

Mentor: Lidija Labovic

Student: Aleksandar Jovanovic 69/09

11

12