Closed lexical category of the English language
The English personal pronouns are a subset of English pronouns taking various forms according to number, person, case and grammatical gender. Modern English has very little inflection of nouns or adjectives, to the point where some authors describe it as an analytic language, but the Modern English system of personal pronouns has preserved some of the inflectional complexity of Old English and Middle English.
Forms.
Unlike nouns which are not inflected for case except for possession ("woman/woman's"), English personal pronouns have a number of forms, which are named according to their typical grammatical role in a sentence:
Possessive pronouns ("mine", "ours", etc.) replace the entity that was referred to previously (as in "I prefer mine") or serve as predicate adjectives (as in "this book is mine"). For details see English possessive. As they are pronouns they cannot precede any noun.
Basic.
The basic personal pronouns of modern English are shown in the table below.
Other English pronouns which have distinct forms of the above types are the indefinite pronoun "one", which has the reflexive "oneself" (the possessive form is written "one's", like a regular English possessive); and the interrogative and relative pronoun "who", which has the objective form "whom" (now confined mostly to formal English) and the possessive "whose" (which in its relative use can also serve as the possessive for "which").
Note that singular they is morphosyntactically plural: it is used with a plural verb form, as in "they laugh" or "they are". See the singular they section for more information.
Archaic and non-standard.
Apart from the standard forms given above, English also has a number of non-standard, informal and archaic forms of personal pronouns.
Complete table.
A more complete table, including the standard forms and some of the above forms, is given below. Nonstandard, informal and archaic forms are in "italics".
For further archaic forms, and information on the evolution of the personal pronouns of English, see Old English pronouns.
Generic "you".
The pronoun "you" (and its other forms) can be used as a generic or indefinite pronoun, referring to a person in general. A more formal equivalent is the indefinite pronoun "one" (reflexive "oneself", possessive "one's"). For example, "you should keep your secrets to yourself" may be used in place of the more formal "one should keep one's secrets to oneself".
Gender.
Use of "he", "she" and "it".
The masculine pronouns, "he", "him", and "his" are used to refer to male persons. The feminine pronouns "she", "her", and "hers" are used to refer to female persons. "It" and "its" are normally used to refer to an inanimate object or abstract concept; however, babies and young children may sometimes be referred to as "it" (e.g. "a child needs its mother"). Outside of these very limited contexts, use of "it" as a pronoun for people is generally avoided, due to the feeling that it is dehumanizing.
Traditionally, in English, if the gender of a person was not known or ambiguous, then the masculine pronouns were often used by default (e.g. "a good student always does his homework"). Increasingly, though, singular "they" is used in such cases (see below).
Animals are often referred to as "it", but "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. Inanimate objects with which humans have a close relationship, such as ships, cars and countries considered as political, rather than geographical, entities, are sometimes referred to using feminine pronouns such as "she" and "her". This may also be extended to other entities, such as towns.
Singular "they".
The singular "they" emerged by the 14th century, about a century after the plural "they". Even when used with singular meaning, "they" takes a plural verb: "If attacked, the victim should remain exactly where they are." Due to this supposed grammatical inconsistency, use of singular "they" was discouraged by some grammarians during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in favor of using generic "he". Since the 1970s, however, this trend has reversed, and singular "they" now enjoys widespread acceptance.
In the early 21st century, use of singular "they" with known individuals emerged for some non-binary people, or when the sex or social gender of a person is unknown or unspecified. This is a way of producing gender-neutral language while avoiding other pronouns like "he or she", "he/she", or "s/he".
Gender agreement of genitives.
In English, genitive pronouns agree with the gender of the antecedent or referent. This is in contrast to many languages in which such pronouns agree with the gender of the head noun of the NP in which they appear. For example, in "She saw her brother", the genitive pronoun "her" agrees with antecedent "she". Both are feminine. In Italian, in contrast, the same sentences is "Lei ha visto suo fratello". Here "suo" is a third-person, singular, masculine genitive pronoun. It agrees with "fratello" (brother), not with the feminine antecedent "lei".
Case usage.
As noted above, most of the personal pronouns have distinct case forms – a subjective (nominative) form and an objective (oblique, accusative) form. In certain instances variation arises in the use of these forms.
As a general rule, the subjective form is used when the pronoun is the subject of a verb, as in he kicked the ball", whereas the objective form is used as the direct or indirect object of a verb, or the object (complement) of a preposition. For example: "Sue kicked him, "someone gave him the ball", "Mary was with him".
When used as a predicative expression, i.e. as the complement of a form of the copula verb "be", the subjective form was traditionally regarded as more correct (as in "this is I, "it was he), but nowadays the objective form is used predominantly ("this is me, "it was him), and the use of the subjective in such instances is normally regarded as very formal or pedantic; it is more likely (in formal English) when followed by a relative clause ("it is we who sent them to die"). In some cases the subjective may even appear ungrammatical, as in *"is that we in the photograph?" (where us would be expected).
When a pronoun is linked to other nouns or pronouns by a coordinating conjunction such as "and" or "or", traditional grammar prescribes that the pronoun should appear in the same form as it would take if it were used alone in the same position: "Jay and I will arrive later" (since "I" is used for the subject of a verb), but "between you and me" (since "me" is used for the object of a preposition). However, in informal and less careful usage this rule may not be consistently followed; it is common to hear "Jay and me will arrive..." and "between you and I". The latter type (use of the subjective form in object position) is seen as an example of hypercorrection, resulting from an awareness that many instances of "and me" (like that in the first example) are considered to require correction to "and I".
Similar deviations from the grammatical norm are quite common in other examples where the pronoun does not stand alone as the subject or object, as in "Who said us Yorkshiremen" [grammatical: "we Yorkshiremen"] "are tight?"
When a pronoun stands alone without an explicit verb or preposition, the objective form is commonly used, even when traditional grammarians might prefer the subjective: "Who's sitting here? Me." (Here "I" might be regarded as grammatically correct, since it is short for "I am (sitting here)", but it would sound formal and pedantic, unless followed by "am".)
A particular case of this type occurs when a pronoun stands alone following the word "than". Here the objective form is again predominant in informal usage ("they are older than us), as would be expected if "than" were analyzed as a preposition. However traditionally "than" is considered a conjunction, and so in formal and grammatically careful English the pronoun often takes the form that would appear if "than" were followed by a clause: "they are older than we (by analogy with "...than we are"), but "she likes him better than me" (if the intended meaning is "...than she likes me").
For more examples of some of these points, see Disjunctive pronoun.
References.
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