Lecture 5.

Theme. Notional parts of speech. The pronoun. The adjective.

1. General characteristics of English pronouns.

2. Classification of English pronouns.

3. Grammatical categories of pronouns.

4. Adjectives.

5. The grammatical category of degrees of comparison.

1. General characteristics of English pronouns.

Many scholars in the history of linguistics denied the very existence of pronouns as part of speech. But in present-day grammars pronouns are recognized as a part of speech. The meaning of pronouns as a part of speech can be stated as follows: pronouns point to the things, abstraction and properties without naming them.

Semantic features of the pronoun. Pronouns, unlike nouns or adjectives, do not denote substances or qualities, but they refer to the substances or qualities expressed by nouns and adjectives in the same context or situation. E.g. Peter went to Mary’s place yesterday. He (Peter) went to her (Mary’s) place yesterday as he (Peter) wanted to tell her (Mary) the news. According to their meaning pronouns are generally subdivided into: personal, possessive, demonstrative, indefinite, negative, reflexive, interrogative, reciprocal.

Morphological features of the pronoun. Pronouns, though not all of them, have the categories of number and case.

Syntactic features. Pronouns are used either absolutely or as a part of speech. eg. They wrote letters to each other. He wrote a letter to his brother. Either of them could have written this letter. (‘They’, ‘he’ – absolute use, ‘each’, ‘other’, ‘his’, ‘either’, ‘them’, ‘this’ – part of a phrase.) All pronouns with the exception of possessive, have the same form whether they are used absolutely or as a part of a phrase. As to the syntactical function some pronouns combine with verbs (he speaks, find him), while others can also combine with following noun (this room). In the sentence, some pronouns may be the subject (he, what) or the object, while others are the attribute (my). Pronouns can be predicative.

2. Classification of English pronouns.

Pronouns constitute a heterogeneous class of items with numerous subclasses. We usually find in grammars a classification of pronouns into personal (possessive, interrogative, indefinite, relative, etc.)

1. Personal.

We find the following personal pronouns in English:

I and we are said to be the pronouns of the 1^st person (or persons) who speaks (speak).You is said to be the pronoun of the 2^nd person; i.e. a person (persons) spoken to. He, she, it and they are said to be the pronouns of the 3^rd person; i.e. a person (persons) or a thing (things) spoken about. We distinguish singular and plural personal pronouns.

2. Possessive pronouns.

There are the following possessive pronouns in English: my, our, your, his, her, its, their.

Possessive pronouns serve to modify nouns in the sentence; i.e. they function as an attribute.

He took off his jacket and loosened his tie.

The possessive pronouns may perform noun functions as well. Then are used in their so-called absolute form: mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, and theirs.

She put her arm through mine.

3. Reflexive pronouns.

The reflexive pronouns are formed by adding -self (in the plural –selves) to the possessive pronouns in the 1^st and 2^nd persons and to the objective case of the personal pronouns in the 3d person. Myself, ourselves, yourself, yourselves, himself, herself, itself, themselves. There is one more reflexive pronoun which is formed from the indefinite pronoun one-oneself. These pronouns are used as noun pronouns in the sentence. They are called reflexive pronouns, because they serve to show that the action performed by the person which is indicated by the subject of the sentence passes back again to the same person. In other words, the subject of the sentence and its object indicate the same person. In this case the reflexive pronouns are weakly stressed.

He wrapped himself in this blanket and fill off to sleep.

As is seen from the above example, the reflexive pronouns may serve in this sentence as different kinds of objects-direct, indirect and prepositional.

4. Emphatic pronouns.

Emphatic pronouns have the same forms as reflexive pronouns-they are homonyms. Emphatic pronouns are used for emphasis. They serve as noun pronouns and always perform the function of apposition in the sentence. They can be placed either immediately after this headword or at the end of the sentence. They are rendered in Russian as сам, сама, само, сами.

You yourself told them the story.

The emphatic pronouns are strongly stressed, nevertheless they can be omitted without destroying the sense of the sentence.

5. Demonstrative pronouns.

There are four demonstrative pronouns in English: this, that, such and same. They all may be used as pronouns and as adjective pronouns. The pronouns this and that change for number. Their corresponding plural forms are these and those.

6. Indefinite pronouns.

The indefinite pronouns express various degree and various kinds of indefiniteness. We find the following subgroups among them:

1. indefinite pronouns proper:

   1. some, any, no;

   2. somebody, anybody, nobody;

someone, anyone, no one;

something, anything, nothing;

3. one, none;

1. distributive pronouns:

   1. all, every, each, other, either, neither, both:

   2. everybody, everyone, everything;

2. qualitative pronouns:

   1. much, many, little, few, a little, a few, a lot of, lots of, a great deal, a great many, etc.

1. Reciprocal pronouns.

There are two reciprocal pronouns in English: each other and one other. They show that something is done mutually. Both pronouns are mainly used in the function of an object ( direct, indirect and prepositional) in the sentence.

I know that my two aunts bitterly disliked each other.

8. Interrogative pronouns.

The interrogative pronouns are: who(whom), whose, what, which, how much and how many. They are all used in forming questions.

How much did you find it?

9. Conjunctive or connective pronouns.

The pronouns who (whom), whose, what, which, how many, how much and that serve to connect subordinate clauses with the principal clause. Owing to their auxiliary function they are called conjunctive pronouns. At the same time they all have an independent syntactic function in the subordinate clause.

Do you know who has bought the house? (subject)

Conjunctive pronouns may be used to introduce different kind of clauses, except adverbial clauses and appositive clauses, which are introduced only by conjunctions.