The Pronoun in English

o a ‘part of speech’

o very different from other lexical-grammatical classes of words:

(1) semantically:

o have no denotational meaning, do not name objects of reality

o have very general and unspecified semantics of indication (= deixis) which is only actualised in context

o Semantic groups of Pronous:

- Personal ProN

- Demonstrative ProN

- Reflexive ProN

- Reciprocal ProN

- Possessive ProN

- Indefinite ProN

- Relative ProN

- Interrogative ProN

(2) morphologically:

o Only a few pronouns are variable while most are not:

o Personal Pronouns have the morphological Category of Case which is different from the Category of Case of the Noun:

- the Common – Object – Genitive case forms with incomplete paradigms

o Demonstrative and Personal Pronouns have the morphological Category of Number

(3) syntactically:

o have no syntactic functions of their own; substitute for words of other classes (= are used in their functions) → Syntactic groups of ProN:

- Noun-Pronouns (= Substantivized ProN),

- Adjective-Pronouns (= Adjectivized ProN)

o With some pronouns there is no substitution:

- I, you, they, ‘dummy’ it

→ an extremely heterogeneous class, but it has two defining characteristics which unite the class of pronouns and make it different from all the other word classes:

- no lexical meaning but semantics of indication

- no syntactic roles of their own but the function of substitution