ENGLISH PERSONAL PRONOUNS

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

Basic personal pronouns of modern English

Full list of pronouns

''I'' and ''me''

''My'' and ''mine'', ''thy'' and ''thine''

''Ourself''

''You'' and ''Ye''

''Thou''

Other second person pronouns

''His'' and ''its''

Third person plural

References

See also

Basic personal pronouns of modern English

The basic personal pronouns of modern English are shown below. Possessive pronouns are used to show possession.

Full list of pronouns

The following table shows the full list of English personal pronouns, including archaic and dialectal forms. Reflexive pronouns are used as the object of a sentence when it coincides with the subject.

			personal pronoun			possessive pronoun	possessive determiner
			subjective	objective	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

''I'' and ''me''

★ In modern English, ''me'' is often used as the predicative of the copula. In colloquial speech, it is also frequently used as a subject, in certain kinds of sentences. See ''It's I/It's me'' for a more detailed discussion.

''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''.

''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?"

''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''.

''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 parts of England and Scotland, and in some Christian religious communities. See ''Thou'', for further information.

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''.

''His'' and ''its''

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

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''.

References

1. Morse-Gagne, Elise E. 2003. ''Viking pronouns in England: Charting the course of THEY, THEIR, and THEM''. University of Pennsylvania doctoral dissertation. University Microfilms International.
It should also be noted that the conclusion that these pronouns are of Scandinavian origin did not originate with this dissertation. It was published by Kluge in his ''Geschichte der Englischen Sprache'' in 1899 and by Bjorkman in ''Scandinavian loan-words in Middle English'' in 1900, and while it is commonly accepted, some scholars have disputed this claim.

See also

★ One (pronoun)

★

★ Personal pronoun

★ Gender-specific pronoun

★ Gender-neutral pronoun

★ Generic antecedents

★ Disjunctive pronoun