3. Syntactic characteristics of pronouns

Pronouns can be used both as notional and auxiliary elements. When used as notional words, they perform the function of this or that part of the sentence. When employed auxiliary elements, they help express various grammatical meanings. Personal pronouns, for instance, render the grammatical meaning of person.

Etymologically, the word ‘pronoun’ means ‘a word, used instead of a noun’. This meaning reflects, to some extent, the role of pronouns in the language. Pronouns can replace hundreds of nouns. This explains the fact that pronouns are used very frequently and form a considerable part of any text, though as a class of words they're not numerous.

But this definition is not suitable to all pronouns. For instance, in the sentence ‘It snows’, the pronoun ‘it’ does not take the place of any noun. If you try to substitute a noun for ‘it’, you will find none that will quite do. The best possible substitute is ‘The snow (snows)’, and this is a ridiculous repetition. So, the pronoun ‘it’ in sentence of the type ‘It snows’ stands independent of all noun reference or relationship.

What is more important, pronouns substitute not only nouns but also adjectives. Taking into consideration that the syntactic functions of pronouns are similar to those of nouns and adjectives, H. Sweet denies the existence of pronouns as a separate part of speech. Pronouns, in his opinion, are a special subclass of nouns and adjectives and, accordingly, he distinguishes noun-pronouns and adjective-pronouns.

Noun-pronouns perform the functions of subject and object,

E.g. She laughed – subject.

The children will hear you – object.

Adjective-pronouns function as attributes,

E.g. Your husband has come.

Personal pronouns are always used as noun-pronouns. Possessive pronouns are functionally, heterogeneous. Possessive pronouns on the conjoint for (me, his, her, its, our, your, their) are always used as adjective – pronouns; possessive pronouns in the absolute form (mine. his. hers. int. our. yours. theirs) are always used as noun – pronouns,

E.g. Did it ever cross your mind that I might have married Ann f because I fell in love with her? – No. Did it ever cross yours?

But the majority of pronouns have both noun and adjective functions,

E.g. Oh, look at this bracelet, Carlos – here the pronoun ‘this’ is an adjective – pronoun modifying the noun ‘bracelet’.

How much is this? – here the pronoun ‘this’ is a noun-pronoun used absolutely, without a noun.

The similarity of functions, however, is no excuse for uniting pronouns with nouns and adjectives. They differ not only semantically and to some extent morphologically, as is evident from the above given material, but also syntactically which become evident if we analyze their combinability.

Noun-pronouns, just like nouns, combine with postpositive and prepositive verbs,

E.g. Claude produced a pocket-knife.

He saw me the next night…

But as opposed to nouns, noun-pronouns generally do not combine with articles and are not modified by prepositive adjectives. Compare the regular occurrence of combinations of the type ‘Poor Murdoch’, on the one hand, and the rare use of combinations of the type ‘Poor me’.

Adjective-pronouns, just like adjectives, combine with nouns in postposition,

E.g. The tall youth beside him was his son Bert.

Her face lit up suddenly.

But as opposed to adjectives, adjective-pronouns cannot form combinations with preceding adverbs.

Summing it all up, we can say that there is no uniformity of morphological and syntactic characteristics in the groups of pronouns. Pronouns form a class chiefly on the basis of their semantic peculiarities. In the respect, pronouns constitute a specific part of speech, for in all other notional parts of speech formal characteristics are of paramount importance because they are systemic.