English personal pronouns

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The personal pronouns of English can have various forms according to gender, number, person, and case. Modern English is a language with very little inflection, to the point where some authors describe it as analytic, but its system of personal pronouns has preserved part of the inflectional complexity of Old English.

Contents 1 List of English pronouns 1.1 My and mine, thy and thine 1.2 Ourself 1.3 You and Ye 1.4 Thou 1.5 Other second person pronouns 1.6 His and its 1.7 Third person plural 2 References 3 See also

[edit] List of English pronouns

The English personal pronouns including nonstandard ones and related pronouns and determiners are shown below. Reflexive pronouns are used as the object of a sentence when it coincides with the subject. Possessive pronouns are used to show possession. The possessive determiners are more commonly treated as genitive forms, although that analysis does not reflect real usage, since his, her, etc. cannot substitute a noun or noun phrase.

			personal pronoun			possessive pronoun	possessive determiner
			nominative	accusative	reflexive
first-person	singular		I	me	myself	mine	my
	plural		we	us	ourselves ourself	ours	our
second-person	singular	standard (archaic formal)	you	you	yourself	yours	your
		archaic informal	thou	thee	thyself	thine	thy
	plural	standard	you	you	yourselves	yours	your
		archaic	ye	you	yourselves	yours	your
		nonstandard	you guys you all y'all youse youse guys you-uns	you guys you all y'all youse youse guys you-uns yous yis	yourselves y'all's selves	yours y'all's yous's	your y'all's
third-person	singular	masculine	he	him	himself	his	his
		feminine	she	her	herself	hers	her
		neuter	it	it	itself	-	its
	plural		they	them, 'em	themselves	theirs	their

[edit] My and mine, thy and thine

• Historically, my comes from a reduction of mine, and well after the emergence of my, mine continued to be used instead of my before words beginning with vowel sounds. Similarly with thy and thine.

[edit] Ourself

• Ourself is used when we is semantically singular as in the royal we, the editorial we, and the nurse's we, e.g. "We seem a bit displeased with ourself, don't we?"

[edit] You and Ye

• Historically, you was an object pronoun, and ye was its subject counterpart; today, you fills both roles in Standard English, though some dialects use ye for the two roles, and some use ye as an apocopated or clitic form of you.
• The only common distinction between singular and plural you is in the reflexive and emphatic forms.
• You and its variants can sometimes be used in a generic sense. See Generic you.

[edit] Thou

• Sometime between 1600 and 1800, the various second-person singular forms of thou began to pass out of common usage in most places, except in poetry, archaic-style literature, and descriptions of other languages' pronouns. Thou refers to one person who is familiar, though as in other European languages, it is also used of God. Today they have all but disappeared from Standard English, though a few dialects retain them.
• Thou still exists in northern England and Scotland, and in some Christian religious communities. See Thou, for further information.

[edit] Other second person pronouns

• While formal Standard English uses you for both singular and plural, many dialects use various special forms for the plural, such as y'all (short for "you all"), you guys, yinz (short for "you ones"), and yous (also spelled youse). Corresponding reflexive and possessive pronouns are often used as well.
• In Scotland, yous is often used for the second person plural (particularly in the Central Belt area). However, in some parts of the country, ye is used for the plural you. In older times and in some other places today, ye is the nominative case and you is the accusative case. Some English dialects generalised ye, while standard English generalised you. Some dialects use ye as a clipped or clitic form of you.

[edit] His and its

• Historically, his was the possessive of it as well of he; nowadays it has been completely supplanted by its.

[edit] Third person plural

• Historically the forms they, their, and them are of Scandinavian origin (from the Viking invasions and settlement in northeastern England during the Danelaw period from the 9th to the 11th centuries).^[1]
• The third person plural form 'em is believed to be a survival of the late Old English form heom, which appears as hem in Chaucer, and has apparently lost its aspiration due to being used as an unstressed form.
• The forms of they are also sometimes used with grammatically or semantically singular antecedents, though it is a matter of some dispute whether and when such usage is acceptable. When this is the case, they take a plural verb, but themselves with a singular sense is often changed to themself.
• Although traditionalists often condemn the use of the singular they when gender unknown or unimportant, this is often found in informal speech. In fact, it is a revival of an earlier usage and may one day become standard usage because it is so common; it also avoids awkward constructions like he or she. This usage is authorised and preferred by the Australian Government Manual of Style for official usage in government documents. See Singular they.

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• One (pronoun)
• Wiktionary table of personal pronouns
• Disjunctive pronoun
• Personal pronoun
• Gender-specific pronoun
• Gender-neutral pronoun