Intensive pronoun
Encyclopedia

In English

An intensive pronoun is a pronoun
Pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun , such as, in English, the words it and he...

 used to add emphasis to a statement; for example, "I did it myself." While English intensive pronouns use the same form as reflexive pronoun
Reflexive pronoun
A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that is preceded by the noun, adjective, adverb or pronoun to which it refers within the same clause. In generative grammar, a reflexive pronoun is an anaphor that must be bound by its antecedent...

s, an intensive pronoun is different from a reflexive, because the pronoun can be removed without altering the meaning of the sentence. An intensive noun works with the antecedent, the word the pronoun replaces.
For example, compare "I will do it myself", where "myself" is intensive and can be removed without changing the meaning, to "I nominated myself", where "myself" fills the necessary role of direct object.

In other languages

Latin has a dedicated intensive pronoun, ipse, -a, -um.

In Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

, as in most pro-drop language
Pro-drop language
A pro-drop language is a language in which certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they are in some sense pragmatically inferable...

s, emphasis can be added simply by explicitly using the omissible pronoun. Following the above example, "I will do it myself" is rendered "Lo haré yo." Adding "mismo" after the pronoun yields additional emphasis. French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 uses the disjunctive pronouns for the same purpose.

See also

  • Disjunctive pronoun
  • Weak pronoun
    Weak pronoun
    A weak pronoun is a pronoun phonetically more independent than clitic pronouns but less independent than ordinary pronouns....


Latin: tp emphasize a noun or pronoun in either a subject or predicate of a sentence
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