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}} Personal pronouns are Pronoun s often used as substitutes for proper or common Nouns . ENGLISH PERSONAL PRONOUNS See Also: English personal pronouns Ordinary English has seven personal pronouns:
Each pronoun has a number of forms:
That said, the different pronouns, and the different forms of the pronouns, often have overlapping functions. USAGE In English, it is standard to use personal pronouns explicitly even when the context is already understood, or could easily be understood by reading the sentences that follow. For example, one does not normally use the word "he" to refer to somebody if the person reading or hearing the sentence does not know to whom one is referring. In addition, personal pronouns must correspond to the correct Gender and number of people or objects being described. Using the word "it" in English to refer to a person, for example, is usually considered extremely derogatory. It is generally not accepted to use a singular version of a pronoun for a plural noun, and vice versa. An exception is the informal, spoken use of ''they'' to refer to one person when sex is unknown: "If somebody took my book, ''they'd'' better give it back". In general, pronouns are used often, since too little of their usage can make a sentence very difficult to read. In French , pronouns include ''je'', ''nous'', ''tu'', ''vous'', ''ils'', ''elles'', ''lui'', ''toi'', ''moi'', etc. There are different pronouns used for different genders and numbers of people, and unlike English where "them" and "they" are used for every object whether it is masculine or feminine, in French the plural forms vary according to gender. In addition, in French, different pronouns are used for Indirect Object s of a sentence than Direct Object s. has different pronouns for different genders and numbers. ''Ille'' and ''illes'' are masculine and general, for example, while ''illa'' and ''illas'' are feminine. Unlike French, however, verbs remain the same for all pronouns: : ''Illa lege un articulo,'' she is reading an article : ''Illas lege articulos,'' they (feminine) are reading articles Interlingua has relationships with many language families, and this is reflected in its pronouns. Interlingua ''io'', for example, shows similarities with such word forms as English ''I'', German ''ich'', Italian ''io'', Spanish ''yo'', Russian ''ya'', and Chinese ''wo''. OTHER TYPES OF PERSONAL PRONOUNS Other common distinctions made with personal pronouns found in the world's languages include: Pronouns usually show the basic distinctions of Person (typically a three-way distinction between first, second, and third persons) and Number (typically singular vs. plural), but they may also feature other categories such as Case ( Nominative ''we'' vs. Objective ''us'' in English), Gender (masculine ''he'' vs. feminine ''she'' in English), and Animacy or humanness (human ''who'' vs. nonhuman ''what'' in English). These can of course vary greatly. The English dialect spoken in Dorset uses ''ee'' for animates and ''er'' for inanimates. Some languages distinguish between ''inclusive'' And ''exclusive'' first-person plural pronouns — those that do and do not include their audience, respectively. For example, Tok Pisin has seven first-person pronouns according to number (singular, dual, trial, plural) and inclusiveness/exclusiveness, such as ''mitripela'' (they two and I) and ''yumitripela'' (you two and I). Slavic Languages have two different third-person genitive pronouns (one Reflexive , one not). For example, in Serbian : Ana je dala Mariji svoju knjigu Ana je dala Mariji njenu knjigu The pronoun may encode politeness and formality. Many languages have different pronouns for informal use or use among friends, and for formal use or use about/towards superiors, especially in the second person. A common pattern is the so-called T-V Distinction (named after the use of pronouns beginning in ''t-'' and ''v-'' in Romance Language s, as in French ''tu'' and ''vous''). It is very common for pronouns to show more grammatical distinctions than nouns. The Romance Language s have lost the Latin grammatical case for nouns, but preserve the distinction in the pronouns. The same holds for English with respect to its Germanic ancestor. It is also not uncommon for languages not to have third-person pronouns. In those cases the usual way to refer to third persons is by using Demonstrative s or full noun phrases. Latin made do without third-person pronouns, replacing them with Demonstrative s (which are in fact the source of third-person pronouns in all Romance languages). Some languages, such as Japanese and Korean , lack pronouns entirely. In these languages, instead of pronouns, there is a small set of nouns that refer to the discourse participants (as pronouns do in other languages). These referential nouns are not usually used, with proper nouns, deictics, and titles being used instead. Usually, once the topic is understood, no explicit reference is made at all. In Japanese sentences, subjects are not obligatory, so the speaker chooses which word to use depending on the rank, job, age, gender, etc. of the speaker and the addressee. For instance, in formal situations, adults usually refer to themselves as ''watashi'' or the even more polite ''watakushi'', while young men may use the student-like ''boku'' and police officers may use ''honkan'' ("this officer"). In informal situations, women may use the colloquial ''atashi'', and men may use the rougher ''ore''. NULL-SUBJECT AND PRO-DROP LANGUAGES See Also: Pro-drop language Null subject language In some languages, a pronoun is required whenever a noun or noun phrase needs to be referenced, and sometimes even when no such antecedent exists (cf the Dummy Pronoun in English ''it rains''). In many other languages, however, pronouns can be omitted when unnecessary or when context makes it clear who or what is being talked about. Such languages are called Null-subject Language s (when subject pronouns may be omitted), or Pro-drop Language s (when, more generally, subject or object pronouns may be omitted). In some cases the information about the antecedent is preserved in the verb, through its Conjugation . SEE ALSO
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