PRONOUNS

 PRONOUN

    A pronoun is a word used instead of a noun, noun phrase or noun clause in a sentence.  It therefore means that a pronoun replace a noun to avoid tautology (awkward sentence).

E.g: Emeka lost his pen.  

The underlined are a noun and a noun phrase. They can be replaced with pronouns:

Here: He lost It.

Before we continue, let’s get familiar with some of the pronouns we have in English language: 

i , you, he, she, it, we, they, me, him, her, us them, your, our, his, its, her, mine, their, myself, yourself, himself, herself, ourselves, themselves, who, which, that, whom, whose, where, why, what, this, that, nothing, something, any, each, every, plenty, everybody, anybody, somebody etc.

Interestingly, different pronouns can be used to replace the same noun when the latter functions differently. The pronoun that will replace a noun in the subject position is different from the one that will replace the same noun in object position.

For instance:

• Kunle saw the lion.

Kunle is the subject. So, we have ‘he’ replacing Kunle: He saw the lion.

In ‘The lion saw Kunle’, Kunle is the object.

It will be very ungrammatical to say, ‘the lion saw he’.

So, ‘him’ will replace Kunle here.

The lion saw him.

The  same Kunle but different functions and different personal pronouns. Often times, students don’t know when a pronoun is replacing a noun in the subject or object position. So, you hear wrong expressions like:

*It was thrown between you and I.

*To we the students, exam success is do-or-die.

*On behalf of myself and family, I…

 

TYPES OF PRONOUN

•            Personal pronoun
•            Indefinite pronoun
•            Possessive pronoun
•            Reflexive pronoun
•            Reciprocal pronoun

👉 PERSONAL PRONOUN