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Information about English Personal Pronouns

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The personal pronouns of English can have various forms according to gender, number, person, and case. Modern English is a language with very little inflection, to the point where some authors describe it as analytic, but its system of personal pronouns has preserved part of the inflectional complexity of Old English.

Basic personal pronouns of modern English

The basic personal pronouns of modern English are shown below. Possessive pronouns are used to show possession.

Personal pronouns in standard Modern English
Singular Plural
Subject Object Possessive Subject Object Possessive
FirstImemineweusours
Secondyouyouyoursyouyouyours
Third Femininesheherherstheythemtheirs
Masculinehehimhis
Impersonalititits

Full list of pronouns

The following table shows the full list of English personal pronouns, including archaic and dialectal forms. Reflexive pronouns are used as the object of a sentence when it coincides with the subject.

personal pronoun possessive
pronoun		 possessive
determiner
subjective objective reflexive
first-person singularImemyselfminemy
pluralweusourselves
ourself		oursour
second-person singular standard (archaic formal)youyouyourselfyoursyour
archaic informalthoutheethyselfthinethy
plural standardyouyouyourselvesyoursyour
archaicyeyouyourselvesyoursyour
nonstandardyou guys
you all
y'all
youse
youse guys
you-uns		you guys
you all
y'all
youse
youse guys
you-uns
yous
yis
yourselves
y'all's selves		yours
y'all's
yous's		your
y'all's
third-person singular masculinehehimhimselfhishis
femininesheherherselfhersher
neuteritititself-its
pluraltheythem, 'emthemselvestheirstheir

I and me

  • In modern English, me is often used as the predicative of the copula. In colloquial speech, it is also frequently used as a subject, in certain kinds of sentences. See It's I/It's me for a more detailed discussion.

My and mine, thy and thine

  • Historically, my comes from a reduction of mine, and well after the emergence of my, mine continued to be used instead of my before words beginning with vowel sounds. Similarly with thy and thine.

Ourself

You and Ye

  • Historically, you was an object pronoun, and ye was its subject counterpart; today, you fills both roles in Standard English, though some dialects use ye for the two roles, and some use ye as an apocopated or clitic form of you.
  • The only common distinction between singular and plural you is in the reflexive and emphatic forms.
  • You and its variants can sometimes be used in a generic sense. See Generic you.

Thou

  • Sometime between 1600 and 1800, the various second-person singular forms of thou began to pass out of common usage in most places, except in poetry, archaic-style literature, and descriptions of other languages' pronouns. Thou refers to one person who is familiar, though as in other European languages, it is also used of God. Today they have all but disappeared from Standard English, though a few dialects retain them.
  • Thou still exists in parts of England and Scotland, and in some Christian religious communities. See Thou, for further information.

Other second person pronouns

  • While formal Standard English uses you for both singular and plural, many dialects use various special forms for the plural, such as y'all (short for "you all"), you guys, yinz (short for "you ones"), and yous (also spelled youse). Corresponding reflexive and possessive pronouns are often used as well.
  • In Scotland, yous is often used for the second person plural (particularly in the Central Belt area). However, in some parts of the country, ye is used for the plural you. In older times and in some other places today, ye is the nominative case and you is the accusative case. Some English dialects generalised ye, while standard English generalised you. Some dialects use ye as a clipped or clitic form of you.

His and its

  • Historically, his was the possessive of it as well of he; nowadays it has been completely supplanted by its.

Third person plural

  • Historically the forms they, their, and them are of Scandinavian origin (from the Viking invasions and settlement in northeastern England during the Danelaw period from the 9th to the 11th centuries).[1]
  • The third person plural form 'em is believed to be a survival of the late Old English form heom, which appears as hem in Chaucer, and has apparently lost its aspiration due to being used as an unstressed form.
  • The forms of they are also sometimes used with grammatically or semantically singular antecedents, though it is a matter of some dispute whether and when such usage is acceptable. When this is the case, they take a plural verb, but themselves with a singular sense is often changed to themself.
  • Although grammarians and usage writers often condemn the use of the singular they when gender unknown or unimportant, this is often used, both in speech and in writing. In fact, a consistent pattern of usage can be traced at least as far back as Shakespeare, and possibly even back to Middle English. It avoids awkward constructions like he or she. This usage is authorised and preferred by the Australian Government Manual of Style for official usage in government documents. See Singular they.

References

1. ^ Morse-Gagne, Elise E. 2003. Viking pronouns in England: Charting the course of THEY, THEIR, and THEM. University of Pennsylvania doctoral dissertation. University Microfilms International.
It should also be noted that the conclusion that these pronouns are of Scandinavian origin did not originate with this dissertation. It was published by Kluge in his Geschichte der Englischen Sprache in 1899 and by Bjorkman in Scandinavian loan-words in Middle English in 1900, and while it is commonly accepted, some scholars have disputed this claim.

See also

Modern English personal pronouns
I • you • he • she • it • one • we • you • they
English}}} 
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Grammar is the study of the rules governing the use of a given natural language, and as such a field of linguistics. Traditionally, grammar included morphology and syntax, in modern linguistics commonly expanded by the subfields of phonetics, phonology, orthography, semantics, and
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English grammar is a body of rules specifying how meanings are created in English. There are many accounts of the grammar, which tend to fall into two groups: the descriptivist
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To write is to learn.
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    Old English Middle English Modern English
    Nominative hwā who who
    Accusative hwone / hwæne whom who / whom1
    Dative hwām / hwǣm
    Instrumental
    Genitive hwæs whos whose

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    A compound is a word composed of more than one free morpheme.

    English compounds may be classified in several ways, such as the word classes or the semantic relationship of their components.
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    In the English language, an honorific is something that is attached to the name but is not normally used elsewhere, e.g. Mr, Sir, Mrs, Dr, Master. Contrast this with a title or position that can appear without the person's name, e.g.
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    who erects very fine houses, will make a large profit.
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    grammatical number is grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one" or "more than one").[1]
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    English}}} 
    Writing system: Latin (English variant) 
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    inflection or inflexion is the modification or marking of a word (or more precisely lexeme) to reflect grammatical (that is, relational) information, such as gender, tense, number or person.
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      Personal pronouns are pronouns often used as substitutes for proper or common nouns.

      English personal pronouns

      Main article: English personal pronouns


      Ordinary English has seven personal pronouns:

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        Old English/Anglo-Saxon}}}
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        ISO 639-2: ang
        ISO 639-3: ang Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon[1], Englisc
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          Personal pronouns are pronouns often used as substitutes for proper or common nouns.

          English personal pronouns

          Main article: English personal pronouns


          Ordinary English has seven personal pronouns:

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            possessive pronoun is a part of speech that attributes ownership to someone or something. Like all other pronouns, it substitutes a noun phrase, and can prevent its repetition.
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            I (IPA: /aɪ/) is the first-person, singular personal pronoun (subject case) in Modern English. Personal pronouns in standard Modern English
            Singular Plural
            Subject Object Possessive Subject Object Possessive
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            We (IPA: /wiː/) is the first-person, plural personal pronoun (subject case) in Modern English. Personal pronouns in standard Modern English
            Singular Plural
            Subject Object Possessive Subject Object Possessive
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            YOU is a South African magazine which is the English version of the Afrikaans family magazine Huisgenoot.

            This article is about the Modern English personal pronoun. For other uses, see You (disambiguation).

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