The English Language english language

The Minor Parts of Speech

The traditional definition of “pronoun” applies most readily to some occur-
rences of the third person pronouns he, she, it, and they. While I and you
might be taken as substitutes for noun phrases like the speaker and the ad-
dressee, respectively, this seems unnatural. Would a person who says (4a) of
himself say (4b) of himself under the same circumstances? How about (4c)
and (4d)?

(4) a. I feel so broke up, I wanna go home. (The Beach Boys)

b. The speaker feels so broke up, he wants to go home. (Not The

Beach Boys)

c. I love you.

d. The speaker loves the hearer.

We think not. We think that definitions of pronouns that regard them as
replacements for other expressions are fundamentally flawed. We prefer a
more general definition:

A pronoun is a minimal linguistic form which refers to speaker(s), addressee(s),

and other(s), and provides such grammatical information as person, number,

gender, case, and humanness.

These minimal forms reduce the effort required in speaking and writing by
eliminating the need to repeat longer expressions when we wish to refer to
someone or something more than once. For second and subsequent refer-
ences we select just enough information to allow our audience to keep track
of what we’re speaking or writing about. If we choose to use pronouns,
because the information they communicate is so minimal, we must use
them only when the information they communicate is sufficient to allow an
audience to easily figure out what they refer to, either from the co-text or
from the situational context. The grammatical agreement expected between
a pronoun and its antecedent is crucial for making the pronoun’s reference
clear.
English contains several different types of pronouns. We will list each
type below according to the grammatical categories they represent.

Personal pronouns
Table 1 identifies the categories of personal pronouns: