PRONOUN

Definition:

A word (one of the traditional parts of speech) that takes the place of a noun, noun phrase, or noun clause. A pronoun can function as a subject, object, or complement in a sentence. Unlike nouns, pronouns rarely allow modification. Pronouns are a closed word class in English: new members rarely enter the language.

There are several different classes of pronouns:

·         Demonstrative Pronouns

·         Indefinite Pronouns

·         Interrogative Pronouns

·         Intensive Pronouns

·         Personal Pronouns

·         Possessive Pronouns

·         Reciprocal Pronouns

·         Reflexive Pronouns

·         Relative Pronouns

Examples:

·         "She got her looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon."
(Groucho Marx)

·         Chalmers: Well, Seymour, it seems we've put together a baseball team and I was wondering, who's on first, eh?
Skinner: Not the pronoun, but rather a player with the unlikely name of "Who" is on first.
Chalmers: Well that's just great, Seymour. We've been out here six seconds and you've already managed to blow the routine.
("Screaming Yellow Honkers," The Simpsons, 1999)

·         "We rolled all over the floor, in each other's arms, like two huge helpless children. He was naked and goatish under his robe, and I felt suffocated as he rolled over him. We rolled over me. They rolled over him. We rolled over us."
(Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita)

·         "I used to be with it, but then they changed what 'it' was. Now, what I'm with isn't it, and what's 'it' seems weird and scary to me."
(Abe in "Homerpalooza," The Simpsons)

·         "Why shouldn't things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? They are so, and we are so, and they and we go very well together."
(George Santayana)

·         "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together."
(John Lennon and Paul McCartney, "I Am the Walrus")

Demonstrative Pronouns

Definition:

A determiner that points to a particular noun or to the noun it replaces. There are four demonstratives in English: the "near" demonstratives this and these, and the "far" demonstratives that and those.

A demonstrative pronoun distinguishes its antecedent from similar things. When a demonstrative precedes a noun, it is sometimes called a demonstrative adjective.

Examples :

·         "In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri."
(Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, 1979)

·         "Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand."
(Kurt Vonnegut)

·         "Like other determiner classes, the demonstrative pronoun must replace or stand for a clearly stated antecedent. In the following example, that does not refer to 'solar energy'; it has no clear antecedent:

Our contractor is obviously skeptical about solar energy. That doesn't surprise me.

Indefinite Pronouns

Definition:

A pronoun that refers to an unspecified person or thing. Indefinite pronouns include quantifiers (some, any, enough, several, many, much); universals (all, both, every, each); and partitives (any, anyone, anybody, either, neither, no, nobody, some, someone). Many of the indefinite pronouns can function as determiners.

Examples :

·         "For many are called, but few are chosen."
(Bible, Matthew 22.14)

·         "You can fool all the people some of the time; you can fool some of the people all the time; but you can't fool all the people all the time."
(Abraham Lincoln, speech at the Republican state convention in Bloomington, Indiana, on May 29, 1856)

·         "No one wants to hear about my sciatica."
(Bart Simpson, The Simpsons)

Interrogative Pronouns

Definition:

A term in traditional grammar for a pronoun that introduces a question.

The five interrogative pronouns in English are who, whom, whose, which, and what.

Examples :

·         "Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whomare you going to speak it to?"
(Clarence Darrow)

·         "When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: 'Whose?'"
(Don Marquis)

Intensive Pronouns

Definition:

A pronoun ending in -self or -selves that serves to emphasize itsantecedent.

Intensive pronouns often appear as appositives after nouns or other pronouns.

Intensive pronouns have the same forms as reflexive pronouns. Unlike reflexive pronouns, intensive pronouns are not essential to the basic meaning of a sentence.

Examples :

·         "He wondered, as he had many times wondered before, whether he himself was a lunatic."
(George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1948)

·         "But it is only through constant, faithful endeavor by the girl herself that the goal eventually is reached."
(Florenz Ziegfeld)

Personal Pronouns

Definition:

A pronoun that refers to a particular person, group, or thing. Like all pronouns, personal pronouns can take the place of nouns and noun phrases.

These are the personal pronouns in English:

·         First-person singular: I (subject); me (object)

·         First-person plural: we (subject); us (object)

·         Second-person singular and plural: you (subject andobject)

·         Third-person singular: he, she, it (subject); him, her, it (object)

·         Third-person plural: they (subject); them (object)

Note that personal pronouns inflect for case to show whether they are serving as subjects of clauses or as objects of verbs or prepositions.

Also note that all of the personal pronouns exceptyou have distinct forms indicating number, either singular or plural. Only the third-person singular pronouns have distinct forms indicating gender: masculine (he, him), feminine (she, her), and neuter (it). A personal pronoun (such as they) that can refer to both masculine and feminine entities is called ageneric pronoun.

Examples :

·         "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys themso much."
(Oscar Wilde)

·         "From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day Iintend reading it."
(Groucho Marx)

·         "I stopped believing in Santa Claus when my mother took me to see him in a department store, and he asked for my autograph."
(Shirley Temple)

Possessive Pronouns

Definition:

A pronoun that can take the place of a noun phrase to show ownership (as in "This phone is mine").

The weak possessives (also called possessive determiners) function as adjectives in front of nouns. The weak possessives are my, your, his, her, its, our, and their.

In contrast, the strong (or absolute) possessive pronouns stand on their own: mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, and theirs.

A possessive pronoun never takes an apostrophe.

Examples :

·         "We were both work-study kids with University jobs. Hers was in the library; mine was in the Commons cafeteria."
(Stephen King, Joyland. Titan Books, 2013)

·         "Go on, get inside the TARDIS. Oh, never given you a key? Keep that. Go on, that’s yours. Quite a big moment really!"
(The Doctor to Donna in "The Poison Sky." Doctor Who, 2005)

Reciprocal Pronouns

Definition:

A pronoun that expresses mutual action or relationship. In English the reciprocal pronouns are each other and one another.

Some usage guides insist that each other should be used to refer to two people or things, and one another to more than two. (But see Examples and Observations, below.) As Bryan Garner has observed, "Careful writers will doubtless continue to observe the distinction, but no one else will notice" (Garner's Modern American Usage, 2009).

Examples :

·         "Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other."
(John F. Kennedy, in a speech prepared for delivery on the day of his assassination, November 22, 1963)

·         "Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don't know each other; they don't know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because they are separated."
(Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, 1958)

Reflexive Pronouns

Definition:

A pronoun ending in -self or -selves that is used as an object to refer to a previously named noun or pronoun in a sentence.

Reflexive pronouns usually follow verbs or prepositions.

Reflexive pronouns have the same forms as intensive pronouns. Unlike intensive pronouns, reflexive pronouns are essential to the meaning of a sentence.

Examples :

·         "Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."
(Mark Twain)

·         "Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self."
(Cyril Connolly)

Relative Pronouns

Definition:

A pronoun that introduces an adjective clause (also called a relative clause).

The standard relative pronouns in English are which, that, who, whom, and whose. Who and whom refer only to people. Which refers to things, qualities, and ideas--never to people. That and whose refer to people, things, qualities, and ideas.

Examples :

·         "One of the smaller girls did a kind of puppet dance while her fellow clowns laughed at her. But the tall one, who was almost a woman, said something very quietly, which I couldn't hear."
(Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, 1969)

"Spaghetti at her table, which was offered at least three times a week, was a mysterious red, white, and brown concoction."
(Maya Angelou, Mom & Me & Mom, 2013)

SUMBER :

http://grammar.about.com/od/pq/g/pronounterm.htm