Pronoun facts for kids
A pronoun is traditionally a part of speech in grammar, but many modern linguists call it a type of noun. In English, pronouns are words such as me, she, his, them, herself, each other, it, what.
Pronouns are often used to take the place of a noun, to avoid repeating the noun. For example, instead of saying
- Tom has a new dog. Tom has named the dog Max and Tom lets the dog sleep by Tom's bed.
it is easier to say
- Tom has a new dog. He has named it Max and he lets it sleep by his bed.
When a pronoun replaces a noun, the noun is called the antecedent. For example, in the sentence: The dog that was walking down the street, the relative pronoun is the word that referring back to the antecedent, the word 'dog'. In the sentence The spy who loved me, the relative pronoun is the word 'who' and its antecedent is the word 'spy'.
Contents
Differences and similarities to nouns
Pronouns are different from common nouns because pronouns normally do not come after articles or other determiners. For example, people do not say "the it". Pronouns rarely come after adjectives. They are also different because many of them change depending on how they are used. For example, "we" is a 'subject' in grammar, but the word changes to us when used as an object.
Pronouns are the same as nouns because they both change for number (singular & plural), case (subject, object, possessive, etc.), and gender (male, female, animate, inanimate, etc.) Nouns and pronouns can be used in almost all the same places in sentences, and they name the same kinds of things: people, objects, etc. Even though they can not normally come after determiners, or adjectives, neither can proper nouns.
Kinds of pronouns
There are four kinds of pronouns: personal, reciprocal, interrogative, and relative.
| i | personal | you love them | Your sister loves herself |
| ii | reciprocal | we like each other | we are looking at one another |
| iii | interrogative | who is there? | what happened? |
| iv | relative | the person who saw it | the time which you told me |
Personal pronouns in English
This table shows all the personal pronouns in English that are commonly used today.
| Singular | Plural | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subject | Object | Possessive | Reflexive | Subject | Object | Possessive | Reflexive | ||
| First | I | me | my, mine | myself | we | us | our, ours | ourselves | |
| Second | you | you | your, yours | yourself | you | you | your, yours | yourselves | |
| Third | Feminine | she | her | her, hers | herself | they | them | their, theirs | themselves |
| Masculine | he | him | his | himself | |||||
| Neuter | it | it | its | itself | |||||
A subject pronoun can replace a noun that is the subject of a sentence. Refer to the table above; the subject pronouns are: I, You, He, She, It, We, They. An object pronoun can replace a noun that is the object of a sentence. A possessive pronoun shows who or what a noun belongs to.
Another type of personal pronoun is called the 'reflexive pronoun'. Reflexive pronouns are the words ending in '-self' or '-selves', such as: myself, itself, themselves.
"It" and its other forms "its", and "itself" only refer to objects, not people. "They" and its other forms "them", "their", and "theirs" can be used as a singular, for a person who could be either male or female. For example: "The patient will be told how much they will be required to pay."
Images for kids
-
Examples of "our" as a determiner or a noun.
-
Example reflexive structure. Since "himself" is immediately dominated by "John", Principle A is satisfied.
-
Example pronoun structure. Since "him" is immediately dominated by "John", Principle B is violated.
See also
In Spanish: Pronombre para niños
