7. Pronouns

The lexico-grammatical meaning of pronouns.

Pronouns are words, which denote substances, qualities, quantities, circumstances, etc. not by naming or describing them, but by indicating them/

The subdivision of pronouns is carried out on the semantic basis though some grammatical peculiarities of each group are also taken into consideration. Pronouns may be divided into:

1. Persona pronouns: I /me/, you /you/, he /him/, she /her/, it /it/, we /us/, they /them/. The personal pronouns serve to indicate all persons and things from the point of view of the speaker who indicates himself or a group of persons including him by means of "I", "we".

2. Possessive pronouns are expressed by two sets of possessive pronouns: the conjoint possessive pronouns: my, your, his, her, its, our, and the absolute possessive pronouns: mine, yours, his, hers, ours, theirs.

3. Reflexive pronouns express the anaphoric relation, i.e. they show that their first element refers to the person mentioned previously in the sentence: I hurt myself.

4. Demonstrative pronouns: this /these/; that /those/, such, the same. This/these are used when the person or thing is near in space or time to the speaker. That/those are contrasted with this/these.

5. Interrogative pronouns /who, whom, what, which/ are used to form special questions: who told you that? What is he?

6. Connective pronouns are: who, what, which, whose, that. They serve to connect clauses in complex sentences. They are called relative pronouns if they introduce subordinate attributive clauses /This is the house that Jack built./ and conjunctive pronouns if they introduce the other types of subordinate clauses: I wonder who speaks English.

7. Reciprocal pronouns are each other, one another. They serve to express mutuality.

8. Indefinite pronouns are: some, any, something, anything, somebody, anybody, someone, anyone, one.

9. Negative pronouns are: no, none, nothing, nobody, no one, neither.

10. Generalizing pronouns /universal pronouns/: all, both, each, every, everything, everybody, everyone, either.

11. Detaching pronouns: other, another.

Some pronouns have the grammatical category of Case.

Pronouns	The Nominative Case	The Objective Case
Personal pronouns	I, you, he, she, it, we, they	Me, you, him, her, it, us, them
The interrogative (or relative) pronoun who	who	whom

Pronouns	The Common Case	The Genitive Case
Reciprocal pronouns	Each other One another	Each other's One another's
Indefinite, negative, universal pronouns in -body, -one	Somebody, anybody Someone, anyone, one Nobody, no one Everybody, everyone	Somebody's, anybody's, Someone's, anyone's, one's Nobody's, no one's Everybody's, everyone's
Detaching pronouns	Other, another, others	Other's, another's, others'

Some pronouns have the grammatical category of number:

A/ the demonstrative pronouns: this-these; that-those;

B/ the detaching pronoun other-others

Pronouns perform a wide variety of syntactic functions:

• the subject: I know English. Someone came in.

• the object: The teacher saw them. The students met nobody yesterday.

• the attribute: It is my book. Give me another book.

• the predicative: It is me. He was not himself.