First Year Grammar
Lecture eight : pronouns
There are several general features that pronouns have in common which distinguish them from nouns:
1.They do not admit determiners: the map, a room, an apple, etc. but not: the he, a she,..
They often have an objective case: they… them, I … me, but not: cat …..
3.They often have person distinction: 1st person ( I, we), 2nd person ( you: singular, plural), 3rd person( singular: he, she, it…. plural; they)
They often have clear gender contrast: he ( male), she ( female). But it ( rooster, hen)
5.Singular and plural forms are often not morphologically related as nouns, (e.g. Seat… seats): he … they, she … they; but: I is not we
Case
– Subjective: I we he she they who it you
– Objective: me us him her them who ( m) it you
– Genitive: my our his her their whose its your
Person
– Personal……… 1st person….. speaker: I , we
2nd person…… addressed: you ( singular : you; plural : you all…)
3rd person( singular: he, she, it…. plural; they)
– Possessive: determinative ( my, your, his, her,…..+ noun )
Independent( mine, yours, his, hers,…….)
– Reflexive: myself, yourself, himself, ourselves, ….
Personal pronoun
The personal pronouns have two sets of case- forms
a. Subjective ……. as a subject of finite verb: she can….
* we wished the winner would be Peter and really it was he .
* it was she who got full marks.
– replacement for co-referential noun phrase
* when John arrived he went straight to the bank.
b. Objective: -as object: I saw them.
– as prepositional complement: I gave it to them.
( informal) – as subject complement: I thought it was her, who came early.
– as the subject of sentences whose predicates have been ellipted: who drove the car? Me…..
