Personal pronoun
Encyclopedia
Personal pronouns are pronoun
s used as substitutes for proper or common noun
s. All known languages contain personal pronouns.
Each pronoun has up to five forms:
, demonstrative pronoun, interrogative pronoun, indefinite pronoun
, reflexive pronoun
, possessive pronoun
or correlative pronoun has to be supplied as the subject of a non-imperative verb. Personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, reflexive pronouns and possessive pronouns typically also have explicit antecedents
when in the third person. Therefore one does not normally use the word "he" to refer to somebody or "this" to refer to something if the person reading or hearing the phrase does not know to whom one is referring.
However, once someone or something has been explicitly mentioned and can be easily identified as the subject, the third person personal pronoun is usually used in place of it. Thus the subject is often made explicit at its first occurrence in a paragraph, and subsequently substituted with its personal pronoun.
In addition, personal pronouns must be in agreement
with the correct gender
and number of people or objects being described. Using the word "it" in English to refer to a person, for example, is usually considered extremely derogatory. It is generally not accepted to use a singular version of a pronoun for a plural noun, and vice versa. An exception is the informal use of "they" to refer to one person when sex is unknown: "If somebody took my book, they'd better give it back" (see singular they
).
Apart from "I" which is always capitalised, personal pronouns are generally lower-case letters unless they are at the beginning of a sentence, unlike a proper noun
for which the first letter is capitalized. One notable exception is in some translations of the Christian Bible, in which the first letter of the personal pronouns referring to either Jesus
or God
are capitalized.
In French
, pronouns include "je", "nous", "tu", "vous", "ils", "elles", "lui", "toi", "moi", etc. There are different pronouns used for different genders and numbers of people, and unlike English where "them" and "they" are used for every object whether it is masculine or feminine, in French the plural forms vary according to gender. In addition, in French, different pronouns are used for indirect objects of a sentence than direct objects.
Interlingua pronouns
also vary by number and gender: singular "io", "tu", and "ille", for example, correspond with plural "nos", "vos", and "illes". Like French, Interlingua
has different pronouns for different genders and numbers. "Ille" and "illes" are masculine and general, for example, while "illa" and "illas" are feminine. Unlike French, however, verbs remain the same for all pronouns:
(typically a three-way distinction between first, second, and third persons) and number
(typically singular vs. plural), but they may also feature other categories such as case
(nominative
we vs. objective
us in English), gender
(masculine he vs. feminine she in English), and animacy
or humanness (human who vs. nonhuman what in English). These can of course vary greatly. The English dialect spoken in Dorset
uses ee for animates and er for inanimates.
Many pronoun systems, including some used in Indo-European
languages, (e.g., Ancient Greek
) have a dual number in addition to plural. This distinction existed in Anglo-Saxon
but died out by Middle English
. Other examples of this in other language families include Classical Hebrew and Arabic. In addition, the 'trial' (we three) is found in some languages.
Some languages distinguish between inclusive and exclusive first-person plural pronouns—those that do and do not include their audience, respectively. For example, Tok Pisin
has seven first-person pronouns according to number (singular, dual, trial, plural) and inclusiveness/exclusiveness, such as mitripela (they two and I) and yumitripela (you two and I). This is common in languages spoken in traditional societies, such as Quechua
and Melanesian languages. This may be related to the existence of moieties in the culture.
Slavic languages
have two different third-person genitive pronouns (one reflexive
, one not). For example, in Serbian
:
The same phenomenon can be seen in North Germanic languages
. For example, in Danish
, this is, respectively:
The pronoun may encode politeness and formality. Many languages have different pronouns for informal use or use among friends, and for formal use or use about/towards superiors, especially in the second person. A common pattern is the so-called T-V distinction
(named after the use of pronouns beginning in t- and v- in Romance languages, as in French tu and vous).
It is very common for pronouns to show more grammatical distinctions than nouns. The Romance languages (with the exception of Romanian
) have lost the Latin grammatical case for nouns, but preserve the distinction in the pronouns. The same holds for English with respect to its Germanic ancestor.
It is also not uncommon for languages not to have third-person pronouns. In those cases the usual way to refer to third persons is by using demonstrative
s or full noun phrases. Latin made do without third-person pronouns, replacing them with demonstrative
s (which are in fact the source of third-person pronouns in all Romance languages).
Some languages, such as Japanese
and Korean
, have pronouns that reflect deep-seated societal categories. This is an extension of the politeness and formality distinctions found in other languages. In these languages there is a small set of nouns that refer to the discourse participants. These referential nouns are not usually used, with proper nouns, deictics, and titles being used instead. Usually, once the topic is understood, no explicit reference is made at all. In Japanese sentences, subjects are not obligatory, so the speaker chooses which word to use depending on the rank, job, age, gender, etc. of the speaker and the addressee. For instance, in formal situations, adults usually refer to themselves as watashi or the even more polite watakushi, while young men may use the student-like boku and police officers may use honkan ("this officer"). In informal situations, women may use the colloquial atashi, and men may use the rougher ore.
Other common distinctions made with personal pronouns found in the world's languages include:
in English it rains). In many other languages, however, pronouns can be omitted when unnecessary or when context makes it clear who or what is being talked about. Such languages are called null-subject languages (when subject pronouns may be omitted), or pro-drop language
s (when, more generally, subject or object pronouns may be omitted). In some cases the information about the antecedent is preserved in the verb, through its conjugation
.
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...
s used as substitutes for proper or common noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
s. All known languages contain personal pronouns.
English personal pronouns
English in common use today has seven personal pronouns:- first-person singular (I)
- first-person plural (we)
- second-person singular and plural (you)
- third-person singular human or animate female (she)
- third-person singular human or animate male (he)
- third-person singular inanimate (it)
- third-person plural (they)
Each pronoun has up to five forms:
- A form used as the subjectSubject (grammar)The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...
of a finite verb (I/we) as cited above. - An objective or obliqueOblique caseAn oblique case in linguistics is a noun case of synthetic languages that is used generally when a noun is the object of a verb or a preposition...
form (me/us/etc.) used as the objectObject (grammar)An object in grammar is part of a sentence, and often part of the predicate. It denotes somebody or something involved in the subject's "performance" of the verb. Basically, it is what or whom the verb is acting upon...
of a verbVerbA verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
or of a preposition - A reflexive formReflexive pronounA 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...
(myself/ourselves/etc.) which replaces the objective-case form in referring to the same entity as the subject. - And two possessive forms (my/our/etc. and mine/ours/etc.). These are used to stand for the possessorPossession (linguistics)Possession, in the context of linguistics, is an asymmetric relationship between two constituents, the referent of one of which possesses the referent of the other ....
of another noun — one that is used as a determiner, and one that is used as a pronoun or a predicate adjective. The former are sometimes not included among the pronouns, since they do not act as nounNounIn linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
s, but have a role closer to that of adjectiveAdjectiveIn grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
s. Nevertheless, the term "pronoun" is frequently applied to both, at least informally. The two sets of pronouns are sometimes distinguished with the terms "possessive determiners" or "possessive adjectivePossessive adjectivePossessive adjectives, also known as possessive determiners, are a part of speech that modifies a noun by attributing possession to someone or something...
s", and "possessive pronounPossessive pronounA possessive pronoun is a part of speech that substitutes for a noun phrase that begins with a possessive determiner . For example, in the sentence These glasses are mine, not yours, the words mine and yours are possessive pronouns and stand for my glasses and your glasses, respectively...
s", respectively.
Usage
In standard usage in English, every verb should have an explicit subject, except for an imperative verb (a command) where the subject is always "you" (singular/plural), even when the context is already understood, or could easily be understood by reading the sentences that follow. Therefore, either an explicit noun, personal pronoun, relative pronounRelative pronoun
A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause within a larger sentence. It is called a relative pronoun because it relates the relative clause to the noun that it modifies. In English, the relative pronouns are: who, whom, whose, whosever, whosesoever, which, and, in some...
, demonstrative pronoun, interrogative pronoun, indefinite pronoun
Indefinite pronoun
An indefinite pronoun is a pronoun that refers to one or more unspecified beings, objects, or places.-List of English indefinite pronouns:Note that many of these words can function as other parts of speech too, depending on context...
, 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...
, possessive pronoun
Possessive pronoun
A possessive pronoun is a part of speech that substitutes for a noun phrase that begins with a possessive determiner . For example, in the sentence These glasses are mine, not yours, the words mine and yours are possessive pronouns and stand for my glasses and your glasses, respectively...
or correlative pronoun has to be supplied as the subject of a non-imperative verb. Personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, reflexive pronouns and possessive pronouns typically also have explicit antecedents
Antecedent (grammar)
In grammar, an antecedent is a noun, noun phrase, or clause to which an anaphor refers in a coreference. For example, in the passage "I did not see John because he wasn't there", "John" is the antecedent of the anaphor "he"; together "John" and "he" are called a coreference because they both refer...
when in the third person. Therefore one does not normally use the word "he" to refer to somebody or "this" to refer to something if the person reading or hearing the phrase does not know to whom one is referring.
However, once someone or something has been explicitly mentioned and can be easily identified as the subject, the third person personal pronoun is usually used in place of it. Thus the subject is often made explicit at its first occurrence in a paragraph, and subsequently substituted with its personal pronoun.
In addition, personal pronouns must be in agreement
Agreement (linguistics)
In languages, agreement or concord is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase. Agreement happens when a word changes form depending on the other words to which it relates....
with the correct gender
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
and number of people or objects being described. Using the word "it" in English to refer to a person, for example, is usually considered extremely derogatory. It is generally not accepted to use a singular version of a pronoun for a plural noun, and vice versa. An exception is the informal use of "they" to refer to one person when sex is unknown: "If somebody took my book, they'd better give it back" (see singular they
Singular they
Singular they is the use of they to refer to an entity that is not plural, or not necessarily plural. Though singular they is widespread in everyday English and has a long history of usage, debate continues about its acceptability...
).
Apart from "I" which is always capitalised, personal pronouns are generally lower-case letters unless they are at the beginning of a sentence, unlike a proper noun
Proper noun
A proper noun or proper name is a noun representing a unique entity , as distinguished from a common noun, which represents a class of entities —for example, city, planet, person or corporation)...
for which the first letter is capitalized. One notable exception is in some translations of the Christian Bible, in which the first letter of the personal pronouns referring to either Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
or God
God in Christianity
In Christianity, God is the eternal being that created and preserves the universe. God is believed by most Christians to be immanent , while others believe the plan of redemption show he will be immanent later...
are capitalized.
In 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...
, pronouns include "je", "nous", "tu", "vous", "ils", "elles", "lui", "toi", "moi", etc. There are different pronouns used for different genders and numbers of people, and unlike English where "them" and "they" are used for every object whether it is masculine or feminine, in French the plural forms vary according to gender. In addition, in French, different pronouns are used for indirect objects of a sentence than direct objects.
Interlingua pronouns
Interlingua grammar
This article is an informal outline of the grammar of Interlingua, an international auxiliary language first publicized by IALA. It follows the usage of the original grammar text , which is accepted today but regarded as conservative....
also vary by number and gender: singular "io", "tu", and "ille", for example, correspond with plural "nos", "vos", and "illes". Like French, Interlingua
Interlingua
Interlingua is an international auxiliary language , developed between 1937 and 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association...
has different pronouns for different genders and numbers. "Ille" and "illes" are masculine and general, for example, while "illa" and "illas" are feminine. Unlike French, however, verbs remain the same for all pronouns:
- "Illa lege un articulo" she is reading an article
- "Illas lege articulos" they (feminine) are reading articles
Other types of personal pronouns
Pronouns usually show the basic distinctions of personGrammatical person
Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
(typically a three-way distinction between first, second, and third persons) and number
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
(typically singular vs. plural), but they may also feature other categories such as case
Grammatical case
In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...
(nominative
Nominative case
The nominative case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments...
we vs. objective
Objective (grammar)
An objective pronoun in grammar functions as the target of a verb, as distinguished from a subjective pronoun, which is the initiator of a verb. Objective pronouns are instances of the oblique case....
us in English), gender
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
(masculine he vs. feminine she in English), and animacy
Animacy
Animacy is a grammatical and/or semantic category of nouns based on how sentient or alive the referent of the noun in a given taxonomic scheme is...
or humanness (human who vs. nonhuman what in English). These can of course vary greatly. The English dialect spoken in Dorset
Dorset
Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...
uses ee for animates and er for inanimates.
Many pronoun systems, including some used in Indo-European
Indo-European
Indo-European may refer to:* Indo-European languages** Aryan race, a 19th century and early 20th century term for those peoples who are the native speakers of Indo-European languages...
languages, (e.g., Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
) have a dual number in addition to plural. This distinction existed in Anglo-Saxon
Anglo-Saxon
Anglo-Saxon may refer to:* Anglo-Saxons, a group that invaded Britain** Old English, their language** Anglo-Saxon England, their history, one of various ships* White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, an ethnicity* Anglo-Saxon economy, modern macroeconomic term...
but died out by Middle English
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
. Other examples of this in other language families include Classical Hebrew and Arabic. In addition, the 'trial' (we three) is found in some languages.
Some languages distinguish between inclusive and exclusive first-person plural pronouns—those that do and do not include their audience, respectively. For example, Tok Pisin
Tok Pisin
Tok Pisin is a creole spoken throughout Papua New Guinea. It is an official language of Papua New Guinea and the most widely used language in that country...
has seven first-person pronouns according to number (singular, dual, trial, plural) and inclusiveness/exclusiveness, such as mitripela (they two and I) and yumitripela (you two and I). This is common in languages spoken in traditional societies, such as Quechua
Quechua languages
Quechua is a Native South American language family and dialect cluster spoken primarily in the Andes of South America, derived from an original common ancestor language, Proto-Quechua. It is the most widely spoken language family of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, with a total of probably...
and Melanesian languages. This may be related to the existence of moieties in the culture.
Slavic languages
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
have two different third-person genitive pronouns (one reflexive
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...
, one not). For example, in Serbian
Serbian language
Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....
:
- Ana je dala Mariji svoju knjigu: Ana gave Maria her (reflexive) book; i.e., Ana gave her own book to Maria.
- Ana je dala Mariji njenu knjigu: Ana gave Maria her (non-reflexive) book; i.e., Ana gave Maria's book to her.
The same phenomenon can be seen in North Germanic languages
North Germanic languages
The North Germanic languages or Scandinavian languages, the languages of Scandinavians, make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages, a sub-family of the Indo-European languages, along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages...
. For example, in Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
, this is, respectively:
- Anna gav Maria sin bog
- Anna gav Maria hendes bog
The pronoun may encode politeness and formality. Many languages have different pronouns for informal use or use among friends, and for formal use or use about/towards superiors, especially in the second person. A common pattern is the so-called T-V distinction
T-V distinction
In sociolinguistics, a T–V distinction is a contrast, within one language, between second-person pronouns that are specialized for varying levels of politeness, social distance, courtesy, familiarity, or insult toward the addressee....
(named after the use of pronouns beginning in t- and v- in Romance languages, as in French tu and vous).
It is very common for pronouns to show more grammatical distinctions than nouns. The Romance languages (with the exception of Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
) have lost the Latin grammatical case for nouns, but preserve the distinction in the pronouns. The same holds for English with respect to its Germanic ancestor.
It is also not uncommon for languages not to have third-person pronouns. In those cases the usual way to refer to third persons is by using demonstrative
Demonstrative
In linguistics, demonstratives are deictic words that indicate which entities a speaker refers to and distinguishes those entities from others...
s or full noun phrases. Latin made do without third-person pronouns, replacing them with demonstrative
Demonstrative
In linguistics, demonstratives are deictic words that indicate which entities a speaker refers to and distinguishes those entities from others...
s (which are in fact the source of third-person pronouns in all Romance languages).
Some languages, such as Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
and Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
, have pronouns that reflect deep-seated societal categories. This is an extension of the politeness and formality distinctions found in other languages. In these languages there is a small set of nouns that refer to the discourse participants. These referential nouns are not usually used, with proper nouns, deictics, and titles being used instead. Usually, once the topic is understood, no explicit reference is made at all. In Japanese sentences, subjects are not obligatory, so the speaker chooses which word to use depending on the rank, job, age, gender, etc. of the speaker and the addressee. For instance, in formal situations, adults usually refer to themselves as watashi or the even more polite watakushi, while young men may use the student-like boku and police officers may use honkan ("this officer"). In informal situations, women may use the colloquial atashi, and men may use the rougher ore.
Other common distinctions made with personal pronouns found in the world's languages include:
- disjunctive pronouns;
- intensive pronounIntensive pronoun- In English :An intensive pronoun is a pronoun used to add emphasis to a statement; for example, "I did it myself." While English intensive pronouns use the same form as reflexive pronouns, an intensive pronoun is different from a reflexive, because the pronoun can be removed without altering the...
s; - prepositional pronounPrepositional pronounA prepositional pronoun is a special form of a personal pronoun that is used as the object of a preposition.English does not have distinct prepositional forms of pronouns. The same set of objective pronouns are used after verbs and prepositions...
s; - direct and indirect object pronounsObject (grammar)An object in grammar is part of a sentence, and often part of the predicate. It denotes somebody or something involved in the subject's "performance" of the verb. Basically, it is what or whom the verb is acting upon...
; - reciprocal pronounReciprocal pronounThe reciprocal pronouns in English are one another and each other. Together with the reflexive pronouns — myself, yourself, ourselves, yourselves, and others — they are classified as anaphors....
s; - weak pronounWeak pronounA weak pronoun is a pronoun phonetically more independent than clitic pronouns but less independent than ordinary pronouns....
s.
Null-subject and pro-drop languages
In some languages, a pronoun is required whenever a noun or noun phrase needs to be referenced, and sometimes even when no such antecedent exists (cf the dummy pronounDummy pronoun
A dummy pronoun is a type of pronoun used in non-pro-drop languages, such as English....
in English it rains). In many other languages, however, pronouns can be omitted when unnecessary or when context makes it clear who or what is being talked about. Such languages are called null-subject languages (when subject pronouns may be omitted), or 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 (when, more generally, subject or object pronouns may be omitted). In some cases the information about the antecedent is preserved in the verb, through its conjugation
Grammatical conjugation
In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection . Conjugation may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, or other grammatical categories...
.
See also
- ClusivityClusivityIn linguistics, clusivity is a distinction between inclusive and exclusive first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called inclusive "we" and exclusive "we"...
- Dummy pronounDummy pronounA dummy pronoun is a type of pronoun used in non-pro-drop languages, such as English....
- DeixisDeixisIn linguistics, deixis refers to the phenomenon wherein understanding the meaning of certain words and phrases in an utterance requires contextual information. Words are deictic if their semantic meaning is fixed but their denotational meaning varies depending on time and/or place...
- Gender-neutral pronounGender-neutral pronounA gender-neutral pronoun is a pronoun that is not associated with any gender. It designates two distinct grammatical phenomena, the first being pronouns/periphrastics that have been assigned nontraditional meanings in modern times out of a concern for gender equity, and the second being genderless...
- Gender-specific pronounGender-specific pronounA language has 'gender-specific pronouns' when personal pronouns have different forms according to the gender of their referents.The English language has three gender-specific pronouns in the 3rd. person singular, whose declined forms are also gender-specific: he , she , and it...
- Gender neutral language
- Generic antecedents
- Grammatical genderGrammatical genderGrammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
- Grammatical personGrammatical personGrammatical person, in linguistics, is deictic reference to a participant in an event; such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns...
- Pronoun gamePronoun game"Playing the pronoun game" is the act of concealing sexual orientation in conversation by not using a gender-specific pronoun for a partner or a lover, which would reveal the sexual orientation of the person speaking. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual people may employ the pronoun game when conversing...