What Is a Pronoun?

To avoid repetition, we often replace nouns in sentences with pronouns. Therefore, the following saying holds true: “Where there’s no noun, there’s a pronoun.”

For example, it would be laborious if we had to say, “The dog is eating the food. The food belongs to the dog. The dog likes the food.” Instead, we can say, “The dog is eating the food. It is his. He likes it.” In this example we have replaced the nouns in the second and third sentences with various pronouns, such as it, his and he.

There are a number of types of pronoun, including personal pronouns, possessive pronouns, reflexive pronouns, interrogative pronouns, relative pronouns, indefinite pronouns and demonstrative pronouns.

We’ll start with the personal pronouns, but as they change based on person, here’s a quick reminder of the first, second and third person.

What is the first, second and third person?

There are three grammatical categories relating to the perspective of the speaker. Imagine you are telling a story from your own perspective and you are talking about yourself. This is the first person and you would use ‘I’ in the narrative, such as “I awoke early.”

The second person reflects those who are being addressed from the speaker’s perspective and is represented by ‘you.’ For the first and second person perspectives, there is a relationship between the speaker and the person.

If the person, animal or thing being referred to is outside of this speaker-audience relationship at this time, then we use the third person, represented by ‘he,’ ‘she,’ ‘it,’ or ‘they.’

What are personal pronouns?

Personal pronouns relate to the first, second or third person and stand in for a noun from one of these perspectives. Just as nouns can be used as the subject, direct object or indirect object in a sentence (referred to as case), so too can pronouns – and they change based on the person, the number and case – and sometimes the gender – of the noun they are replacing.

The declension of personal pronouns

Person	Number	Gender	Subject Pronoun	Object Pronoun	Possessive Pronoun	Reflexive Pronoun
First	Singular	–	I	Me	Mine	Myself
Second	Singular	–	You	You	Your	Yourself
Third	Singular	Masc.	He	Him	His	Himself
Third	Singular	Fem.	She	Her	Hers	Herself
Third	Singular	Neut.	It	It	–	Itself
First	Plural	–	We	Us	Ours	Ourselves
Second	Plural	–	You	You	Yours	Yourselves
Third	Plural	–	They	Them	Theirs	Themselves

What is an interrogative pronoun?

Sometimes we don’t know the noun that we are referring to, in which case we can use an interrogative pronoun to interrogate and find out.

If we are referring to an object or animal, then we use ‘what,’ if we feel that the answer could be part of a large group of options. For example, “What is the tallest building in the world?” If we feel that the options are limited, we would say, “Which is the tallest building, the Eiffel Tower or the Empire State Building?”

If we are referring to a person, we use the interrogative pronouns ‘who,’ ‘whom,’ or ‘whose.’ For example, if the noun being replaced is the subject of the sentence, then we use ‘who,’ such as, “Who is the president of France?”

If the noun being replaced is the object of the sentence, then we use ‘whom,’ such as, “To whom shall I write the letter?”

And if we are interrogating about ownership, then we use the possessive form, ‘whose,’ such as, “Whose is this coat?”

What is a relative pronoun?

We can also use the interrogative pronouns ‘which,’ ‘who,’ ‘whom,’ and ‘whose’ as relative pronouns instead. This is when the pronoun is being used to introduce a dependent clause.

For example, in the sentence, “This is the house which Jack built,” ‘which’ is behaving as a relative pronoun. It prevents us having to repeat the noun, ‘house.’ Otherwise, we would have, “This is the house. Jack built this house.”

Similarly, for ‘who,’ we can say, “The president of France, who visited parliament yesterday, lives in Paris.”

Here’s an example using ‘whom’: “The person, to whom I sent the letter, received it yesterday.”

And finally, ‘whose’: “The owner, whose house this is, visited yesterday.”

What are indefinite pronouns?

Again, using the interrogative pronouns above, we might create indefinite pronouns if we have no idea what we might be referring to.

We create indefinite pronouns by adding ‘-ever,’ to give us pronouns such as ‘whatever,’ ‘whichever,’ ‘whoever,’ or ‘whomever.’

Other indefinite pronouns include ‘one,’ ‘some,’ ‘somebody,’ and ‘everybody.’ We can also negate these to form such pronouns as, ‘no one,’ ‘none,’ or ‘nobody.’ Also in the group, we have the pronoun, ‘anybody.’