Language and Linguistics

Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English Further reading

PERSONAL PRONOUN

Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language | 1998 | | Copyright

PERSONAL PRONOUN. A PRONOUN that refers mainly but not exclusively to a person or people, and that in many languages makes distinctions of PERSON (often first, second, and third person), NUMBER, GENDER, and CASE. In English, most such pronouns distinguish subject and object case (I/me, he/him, she/her, we/us, they/them, and archaic thou/thee) and are the only words that do so (except for who/whom and whoever/whomever). Two pronouns, you and it, are without case distinction. In addition to its references to things, it can refer to information: They're cheaper this week: I read it in the paper. It also has some purely grammatical functions, as in It's raining and I hate it when people shout, in which it is known as existential it. The term personal pronoun is sometimes extended to cover possessive pronoun. See DUMMY, PERSON.

Cite this article
Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.

MLA
Chicago
APA

TOM McARTHUR. "PERSONAL PRONOUN." Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language. 1998. Encyclopedia.com. 31 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

TOM McARTHUR. "PERSONAL PRONOUN." Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language. 1998. Encyclopedia.com. (May 31, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O29-PERSONALPRONOUN.html

TOM McARTHUR. "PERSONAL PRONOUN." Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language. 1998. Retrieved May 31, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O29-PERSONALPRONOUN.html

Learn more about citation styles

personal pronoun

The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English | 2009 | Copyright

per·son·al pro·noun • n. each of the pronouns in English (I, you, he, she, it, we, they, me, him, her, us, and them) comprising a set that shows contrasts of person, gender, number, and case.

Cite this article
Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography.

MLA
Chicago
APA

"personal pronoun." The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English. 2009. Encyclopedia.com. 31 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

"personal pronoun." The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English. 2009. Encyclopedia.com. (May 31, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O999-personalpronoun.html

"personal pronoun." The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English. 2009. Retrieved May 31, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O999-personalpronoun.html

Learn more about citation styles

Free newspaper and magazine articles

	Personal pronouns talk directly to your audience.(Chasers) Magazine article from: BtoB; 10/13/2003
	A magazine for people with personal pronouns.(The Home Forum) Newspaper article from: The Christian Science Monitor; 3/15/2002
	Diachronic change and pronoun status: Italian dative loro. Magazine article from: Linguistics: an interdisciplinary journal of the language sciences; 11/1/2005*