Talk:Pronoun

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[edit] One

So. Ziggy here is not very educated, and is wondering about the word "one". When I say "I want one" and am refering to the delicious looking candied treat my friend is eating, is not "one" a pro... thing? Of some sort. I mean, are we enumerating a thing and then omitting that thing, "I want 1 (candied treat)", or are we using one to replace a word previously mentioned in the dialogue or that perhaps exists outside of language (such as candied treats, which exist both in and out of my words). In Japanese the kana "の" is maybe used towards the same end (赤いのが欲しいのに。。。), but I am also uncertain as to whether that is actually just the possessive の followed by an omited noun (maybe candied treats?). Probably (because it does not appear in the article already) it is not a pronoun, probably it is something else, and if that is the case I wonder if I could be pointed in the direction of the article describing one.

Oh! There is also an article about "one" that describes it as a personal pronoun, which this article most certainly doesn't. --User:zeigfreid

[edit] Massive Deletions

Why were whole sections of this article deleted? There were a lot of important sections that were erased for no reason. The article as it stands is not very informative. I recommend restoring most of it.--66.3.229.194 20:00, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Click on the "history" tab at the top of the article, you will see that
  • The sections were not deleted, but moved to personal pronoun
  • They weren't moved for "no reason", but because they were talking about personal pronouns, which are only one of the many types of pronouns, as you can read in the current version of the article.
PizzaMargherita 21:14, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Historical Linguistics

I think I remember hearing that English pronouns are taken from the Norse (aka Viking) languages (they're North Germanic; English is West Germanic). Can anyone confirm this, and if it's true, can we get a section in this article or a completely different one discussing the history of the pronouns?

[edit] Japanese pronouns

I just moved this to the top since it's important...

I took out (almost) all the stuff about Japanese, because Japanese doesn't have grammatical pronouns. I also added the snippets about Korean, German, Swedish, and Fijian. Squidley 18:41, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
BTW, what is the stuff on deictics/correlatives doing here? They aren't pronouns. Squidley 18:41, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I've just reverted to the last version, since Japanese does indeed have pronouns (see here). Japanese natives recognize them as a separate part of speech, and from a functional POV they're clearly pronouns and not common nouns (even though morphologically they look exactly like nouns).

I might add that this swift deletion of illustrative passages without much justification and without discussion is quite shocking to me (regardless that it was me who wrote the passage).

Deictics may or may not be pronouns. Anybody? I also believe that they should be somewhere else but have trouble finding the borders between pronouns, deictics, determiners, et al.

Now I'm going to try and merge into the article the things Squidley did contribute...

--Pablo D. Flores 13:09, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

In Japanese, the difference between common nouns and pronouns is not clear, and many linguists treat pronouns as a subcategory of nouns. For instance, the following sentence is grammatical:
Watashi wa mukashi no watashi de wa nai.
(lit. I am not the me of the past. = I am not what I used to be.)
Here, "mukashi no watashi," which literally means "the me of the past," is a correct phrase. In addition, there are many nouns that can be used pronomically.
A child: O-tōsan wa doko?
(lit. Where is Dad? = Where are you, Dad?)
His father: O-tōsan wa koko da yo.
(lit. Dad is here. = I'm here.)
In this conversation, both use o-tōsan to refer to the father. This kind of pronoun system is explained in Vietnamese pronouns. Actually, because of these facts, I don't want to use Japanese for an example of complex pronouns according to formality and politeness, but I don't know a better language. - TAKASUGI Shinji 08:20, 2005 Mar 24 (UTC)
Huh. Just because the word "watashi" doesn't change shape doesn't mean that it isn't a pronoun in one case and not in the other (not that I know whether it is or not). I think that was the above user's (Pablo's?) point was that just because something isn't recognized or called a pronoun doesn't mean that it isn't a pronoun. In some places the Sun is perhaps worshiped as a God, but the sun there is just the same as the sun here (though it is worthy of note that they worship it that way). Maybe? (Your name looks Japanese.)

[edit] Thou

"As of 2001, the forms of Thou are no longer used in most speech"

What happened in 2001? User:Verloren

2001 is a sample point representing the beginning of Wikipedia (and thus of its NPOV policy). When I see "now" in Wikipedia articles, I tend to replace it with a recent year because there's a (remote) possibility that 'thee' and 'thou' could experience a comeback over the course of the next century. Does anybody know the range of years when "thou" began to pass out of common use? If not, I'll write "sometime between 1600 and 1900". --Damian Yerrick
Coleridge (died 1834) used "thou", but mostly only when he was in sermonizing mode. Quakers in England seemed to be still using "thou" in the early 1800's. -- Marj Tiefert
Well, if thou gets a revival, hopefully the page will be updated until then... ;P

So, what's the point of having that table of French pronouns there? What does it illustrate?


[edit] You-guys

You-guys is the new plural you. It seems to have originated in Canada

Really? I've said it all my life, more than half a century now, and I was born and grew up in California. -- Zoe
This seems like some bizarre attempt at poking humour at Canada (it's an anonymous edit), and I was unable to find any evidence for the claim that "you-guys" originated in Canada nor that it is becoming "the new plural you", so I removed the footnote. Yelyos


[edit] 3-way deixis

This is a difficult question to ask, but let me try to ask it anyway.

Some languages make a pronoun distinction between "near the speaker" and "near the person spoken to", or so I hear. Is this distinction ever made with pronouns corresponding to the English "now"? In speech, there is obviously no need for such a distinction: I am speaking while you are listening. However, in writing, there is a definite need for such a distinction: you might be reading long after I write. (Like those "Tag Sale Today!" signs.)

-- User:Juuitchan

I think japanese has a similar distinction, (Close to speaker, Close to Listener, Far from Both) but I don't think it applies to pronouns, (who, by the way, aren't used much in japanese.)
Japanese has no pronouns, but it does have a three-way distinction in its deictics: proximal (close to speaker), mesial (close to listener), distal (distant from both speaker and listener). Squidley 18:46, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
See above (Japanese pronouns) --Pablo D. Flores 13:09, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

As I understand, three-way spatial deixis was the basis for developing pronouns in Nostratic. I will try to look into this further.J S Ayer 02:43, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pronoun tables

So, what's the point of having that table of French pronouns there? What does it illustrate?

I agree with this. The table of french pronouns seems completely redundant in this article, it illustrates nothing. -Lethe 23:40, Aug 2, 2004 (UTC)

And "Personal pronouns refer to things" does not seem a pretty informative asertion. Perhaps it would be better 'Personal pronouns refer to "grammatical person", neither to "persons" or people, nor to things.'

-- user:Perique des Palottes


[edit] Slavic genitive pronouns

These slavic examples seem to be reflexive genitive pronouns, plain and simple.

Ana je dala Mariji njenu knjigu. - Ana gave her (Maria's) book to Maria. Ana je dala Mariji svoju knjigu. - Ana gave her (Ana's) book to Maria.

Swedish and the Scandinavian languages share a similar distinction:

Anna gav Maria hennes bok. - Anna gave her (Maria's) book to Maria. Anna gav Maria sin bok. - Anna gave her (Ana's) book to Maria.

(Strangely enough, there seem to be very little info in Wikipedia about reflexive grammar...)

Uhhh, I stubbed some s@#$ together now, I really think there should be more info about reflexive grammar, somehow... Its just boring

[edit] Pronoun terminology

This question was brought to my attention while I was studying RC:

Normally, the pronoun "he" means a man and "she" means a woman. However, in ship terminology, "she" means a ship. Any Internet site that talks about the rule in detail?? Georgia guy 15:36, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Actually, 'she' can mean any vessel.

How come words that replace adjectives are pronouns insted of proadjectives? Daniel 01:46, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Doesn't that derive from old grammatical genders, that were used in Old English, but nowadays largely disappeared. As a footnote, in many languages with gender, such as German, Spanish, French etc, words like he, she, it etc could refer to all kinds of nouns.
See the article pro-form. There are pronouns (he, who, ours), pro-adjectives (such), pro-adverbs (there, when), and pro-verbs (do so). In addition, there are possessive determiners, which are closely related to pronouns (your, whose). - TAKASUGI Shinji 08:26, 2005 Mar 24 (UTC)

[edit] We-exclusive

If no one else gets to it first, I will try to write something enlightening about first person plural exclusive pronouns.J S Ayer 02:28, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

And the inclusive ones too, I s'pose. :) Be my guest. It should be mentioned, but I have no examples to provide (I vaguely remember some Native American languages having the distinction). The proximal/obviative distinction (or "fourth person") should be appear somewhere too. --Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 02:39, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Dravidian languages generally show it, as do most Austronesian languages, according to what I have read. Those that have a dual number usually mark the distinction in that number as well.J S Ayer 02:45, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Personal pronouns

Something is in quite a mess here. There is a section in this article about English personal pronouns, which simply gives a big table of them all. Totally separately there is an article entitled Personal Pronouns, which gives a definition and stylistic/grammatical guidelines. For some reason neither of these articles linked to each other (until I just added such a link). Was this just an oversight?

There doesn't seem to me to be an overwhelming argument for retaining definitive tables of English personal pronouns on a general Pronoun page. The page is either about the English language, or it's about all languages. Examples, sure, but not exhaustive tables. Should there be a specific English pronouns page?

My confusion started when trying to find an equivalent for the French 'pronom personnel' page. It seems that 'personal pronoun' pages in most languages discuss the pronouns of the language itself. So from that respect we should move all info on English personal pronoun pages to the Personal pronouns page. I'm just confused I think :) Some guidance/advice anyone? Stevage 23:06, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

On second thoughts, I think the personal pronouns page should be re-entitled English personal pronouns, any general text moved from there to here, and any specific information moved from here to there.

84.99.234.27 09:01, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

There are already pages on Chinese pronouns, French pronouns etc. I therefore think there should be a page on English pronouns (a slightly wider category than just English personal pronouns), and the information on English personal pronouns should be moved there. Much of the information on the current Personal pronouns page should also be moved there. There may be bits which belong on this page (Pronoun). Personal pronouns should then redirect here (to Pronoun). (Note that Personal pronoun (singular) already redirects here.) I'm starting a mission to remove detailed descriptions of English grammar from general grammar pages. Gailtb 13:24, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly support your mission. Are you aware of the Countering systemic bias WikiProject? The changes you suggested seem fine to me. Make sure you place a note on the top of the talk pages mentioning their intended scope, so newer editors are aware of it. --Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 15:32, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

I support moving the table to Personal Pronouns. So much so that, given general consensus, I have just done that. :)

I am strongly against moving Personal pronouns here, unless we also move here all other types of pronouns, which I am also against anyway :) I also mildly oppose having language-neutral grammar articles, because if I look on an encyclopedia written in English I do expect a specific section on the English language, whereas it is appropriate to put other languages in separate pages, especially if they start proliferating. You may call it bias, but it's not a chauvinistic bias. It's a bias "by construction". PizzaMargherita 10:05, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

A lot of stuff in the article still refers only to personal pronouns, and most material seems to assume that personal pronouns are the only type of pronoun. I'll fix this mess when I have some time. PizzaMargherita 19:21, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Possessive adjectives vs. Determinative possessive pronouns

These are different things which should not be conflated. The latter refers to the use of a pronoun as a determiner through the possessive case. I believe that this is actually what "your" is. Correct me if I'm wrong but "your" is the the possesive case of the pronoun "you" similar to how "his" is the possessive case of he (If not what is the possessive case for those pronouns?). If this is correct, then "your"'s lexical category would be that of noun as changing case does not change lexical category ("him" is still a noun, "John's" is still a noun). In languages which show overt case morphology (case language- Russian, Latin, to name a few) the difference between these two is very clear (tui vs suum in Latin for example) although they serve very similar functions. You should get a linguist to check which "your" is the English version.

Hi there (please sign your comments). I take it you have read the "common misconceptions" section. Where do you disagree?
I must say I don't quite understand your argument. Could you please give examples in any language (with full sentences) where possessive adjectives are different from determinative possessive pronouns?
My understanding is:
  1. Possessive adjectives = Determinative possessive pronouns: "This is your pen". Here "your" is not a pronoun because it's a determiner phrase.
  2. Possessive pronouns = Independent possessive pronouns: "This pen is yours". Here "yours" is a pronoun because it's a noun phrase.
I disagree when you say that "John's" is a noun. It's certainly not a noun phrase, because it cannot be used independently, therefore it can't be a noun because all nouns are noun phrases.
If you're still not convinced, consider this: "The pen belonging to John is blue." Would you say "belonging to John" is a noun? PizzaMargherita 10:09, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
calling her, his, etc. "possessive adjectives" is very confusing considering that they behave like determiners and not like adjectives. Even if called possessive adjectives, they are not members of the lexical category ADJECTIVE, contrary to what the articles cites - 71.96.109.24 04:36, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
According to our current definitions of adjective and determiner, my understanding is that an adjective is a special case of a determiner, and both modify nouns, as is the case for her, his, etc. PizzaMargherita 07:14, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
I just saw your other edits around. Why do you think that his is a determiner phrase and not an adjectival phrase?
Anyway to be honest I'm not fussed either way, so long as we don't call them pronouns. PizzaMargherita 07:23, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
It is a determiner because of its syntactic behaviour, which differs from the syntactic behaviour of adjectives. Determiners are not special cases of adjectives; they occur in mutually exclusive structures. Any decent introductory text in linguistics should have this information. For example, I will present two syntactic frames where adjectives occur and where the determiner his cannot occur:
Attributive position:
(1a) The happy energetic cat relaxed on the mat. (frame: DET ADJ ADJ N .... )
(1b) *The his energetic cat relaxed on the mat. (frame: *DET DET ADJ N .... )
(1c) *The happy his cat relaxed on the mat. (frame: *DET ADJ DET N .... )
Predicate position with extremely preceding:
(2a) This cat was extremely happy and energetic. (frame: ... BE extremely ADJ CONJ ADJ )
(2b) *This cat was extremely his and energetic. (frame: ... *BE extremely DET CONJ ADJ )
(2c) *This cat was extremely happy and his. (frame: ... *BE extremely ADJ CONJ DET )
129.120.4.1 15:47, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
of course it is preferable to consult actual books as the internet is generally unreliable as a source of information. Nevertheless, for your convenience I will start your future investigation with this link: http://www2.let.uu.nl/UiL-OTS/Lexicon/zoek.pl?lemma=Determiner&lemmacode=1079 129.120.4.1 16:08, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Hi, thanks for the link. (Could you please also suggest books? I don't know much about this stuff and I'd like to read a good introdoctury book.)
I find their definition contradictory, don't you? "Term for any kind of (mostly) non-lexical element preceding a noun in a noun phrase." So in "That red car", "that" does not precede a noun, it precedes an adjective. Is then "that" not a determiner in this instance? And is "red" (undisputedly an adjective) a determiner then?
Also, you may want to correct WP articles determiner, adjective, determiner phrase and adjectival phrase. I think they are in a poor state at the moment. Although my understanding is that there is no agreement on some things, for instance some grammarians classify articles to be also adjectives. I'm quite confused to be honest, are we not talking about two different and potentially independent levels of analysis? PizzaMargherita 11:43, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
"Determiners are not special cases of adjectives"—Agreed. My understanding is that the opposite holds: adjectives are special cases of determiners. I (and the WP article) may be wrong, but I really would do with a good definition of "determiner". PizzaMargherita 22:59, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Possessive pronouns vs genetive forms of personal pronouns

Can´t the possessive pronouns be considered genetive forms of the personal ones? I know they aren´t in grammars, so I´m not talking for a change in the article, but would there be any real difference? I mean, the personal pronouns are inflected in other cases, why not the genetive? And why doesn´t one talk about "dative pronouns" and so on now? Anyone who has an explanation? - Laurelindë 14/6 2006

The reason that the possessive pronouns are not considered genitive forms is that they are possessive adjectives instead. Some languages do have genitive pronouns, like Finnish. As for dative pronouns, English doesn't have a dative case, so of course we also don't have dative pronouns. Languages which do have the dative case (German, Latin, etc) do indeed have dative pronouns (ihm, mihi). -lethe talk + 20:48, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Common misconceptions!!

That section is unintentionally hysterical, it's like a piece of written performance art! But that doesn't mean it should go. Babajobu 03:28, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

The only hysterical thing that I can see is your exclamation marks. Care to explain what's wrong please? PizzaMargherita 11:16, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Interogative Pronouns

I have a question. In the sencond example given under the section interrogative pronouns, wouldn't the pronoun who be a relative pronoun as it seems to be modifying an ommited phrase? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.66.14.226 (talk • contribs) .

I edited it because it was really pissing me off. >=( I'm sorry if I'm wrong. Please revert it to the old way if that was correct and I would appreciate if someone could explain why it was interrogative to me as it seemed relative. BTW, what is "what's up what" supposed to mean?—Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.66.14.226 (talk)

[edit] General overhaul

Most of what was in this page concerned personal pronouns only, and was repeated at the specific article on personal pronouns, so I have moved it there, and replaced it with a general classification of pronouns, which I hope will be useful. FilipeS 14:06, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] *sigh*

Tried to fix the "Inclusive and exclusive we" link (fairly certain that an article does exist) because someone filled the link with jjlflkjslkdjfl etc and think I did it wrong. Help?

[edit] Clarification

Under Second Person formal and informal pronouns - what is a "T-V Distinction?" 74.75.233.150 (talk) 06:37, 25 March 2008 (UTC)