Questions tagged [pronouns]
A (usually closed) class of words that can replace nouns.
142 questions
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Are interrogative pronouns deictic?
From what I've read, deixis happens when some constituent or other can't be interpreted without information about the context of the utterance. For example ...
First and second person pronouns are ...
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Do all languages distinguish between persons and non-persons?
I am teaching the concept of "person" and "personhood" to my Grade 12 philosophy class, and we have a video to watch in which the philosopher observes that English pronouns ...
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Are all pronouns proforms?
The definition of a pronoun according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is "any of a small set of words... that are used as substitutes for nouns or noun phrases". The definition of a pro-...
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Languages with distinct pronouns for concrete and abstract things
I was wondering which languages (spoken or otherwise) have distinct separate pronouns (more specific than the words "this" and "that") for referring to concrete and abstract things,...
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What effect does the wrong T-V pronoun have on truth-value?
Suppose someone uses the wrong T-V pronoun in a sentence, e.g. a French person uses "tu" instead of "vous". Is that considered to render the sentence (a) false or (b) without truth-...
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Is it a coincidence that both Italian and German use third person feminine pronouns for formal second-person address?
In both Italian and German, the third person feminine pronouns ("lei" and "Sie," respectively) also serve as the formal second person pronoun.
Etymologically, is it a coincidence ...
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Possessive reflexive pronouns (himself's, herself's, myself's, etc.)
"He looked out the window and saw his car."
Does "his" mean the same person initially called "he", or someone else? In English, it could be either one.
If the English ...
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Could it be that the pronoun *eǵh₂om ("I") in PIE is not an innovation?
I think, it is generally believed that the word for "I" in PIE was an innovation and in more ancient branches the 1st person singular pronoun was similar to the plural one, "min/men&...
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On an argument concerning whether weather *it* is truly an expletive
Morgan (1968) claims that many instances of unstressed it are meaningless. He offers the following argument: the pronoun he in (1a) can refer to either John or Bill but the gap in (1b) can only refer ...
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Are there any languages with second-person pronouns marked for a proximal/distal distinction?
I am curious if there are any natural languages where the personal pronoun used to refer to the addressee varies in some way depending on their distance to the speaker. For instance, one form might be ...
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Grammatical person and the generic you
In English, the second-person pronoun you can be used indefinitely. Wiktionary labels the generic you as an indefinite personal pronoun. Nonetheless, unlike pronouns such as one and anyone, the ...
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Is there a term for mixed gender in plural pronouns (as opposed to masculine, feminine, or neuter)?
In English, there is only one third person plural pronoun to refer to groups of any gender or genders. Multiple "he"s becomes they, multiple "she"s becomes they, multiple "it&...
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Question about coordination
I encounter something interesting about coordination in binding theory.
(1) John1 picked [his own] 1/*2 shoes and [his]*1/2 clothes.
(2) John1 picked [his] 1/2 shoes and [his own]1/*2 clothes.
(3) ...
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Using 'it' in sentences with indefinite noun phrases
I was looking at indefinite noun phrases like 'a man' or specifically sentences of this form:
'If I were to bring a chicken home, my dog would try to eat it.
Why is it that 'a chicken' does not refer, ...
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Dropping repeating pronoun phenomena
Consider this sentence:
"I took the garbage out and read a book "-x
this is short form for:
"I took the garbage out and I read a book"-y
This sentence could naturally appear in a ...
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Are there four potential readings in the examples?
I read that Fiengo & May (1994: 115-117) points out that through the analysis of strict and sloppy readings in elliptical environments, it has shed light not only on more general notions of ...
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Pronouns referring to parts of the same sentence other than the subject
Many European languages have specific pronouns for the case that the subject and an object are identical, e. g.
Reflexive
Non-reflexive
Engl.
"Peter sees himself (in the mirror)"
"...
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Are there languages without T-V distinction (but with two pronouns, one exclusive to singular, the other to plural)?
What I mean is modern English only has "you" for any number of individuals.
French (my native language) has tu that is exclusive to a single person, vous is mostly used for at least two ...
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Does a pronoun share the subject of a noun it is referring to?
I have been reading the Cambridge Dictionary punctuation guide (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/punctuation), and a couple of things struck me as queer. Especially the "...
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What is the evidence that pre-Islamic Arabic had a plural of majesty?
I'm starting to read the Quran and I've found many theologians argue about God referring to himself in the plural, mainly claiming it is a plural of majesty (example: M. A. S. Abdel Haleem's ...
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Do any languages do without the word for "this" (or "that"), or treat them somehow as nouns/verbs/adjectives?
A lot of words are defined in terms of "this", such as "here: this place". But "this" can be a pronoun ("is this your bag?") or determiner ("don't listen ...
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what's this linguistic phenomenon?
I am currently working on coding and standardizing the language of my community.
There is something we do when we speak, that so far I haven't encountered in the other languages that I've delved into, ...
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How to recognize Heads [closed]
I'm reading "Introduction to English linguistics" and in the chapter 4, there is a paragraph that I don't understand :
The other crucial cluster of properties of heads concern their ...
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Do English words have a sort of de-facto inherrent gender (or gender stereotype) to them?
I apologize in advance if this question goes all over the place, I was just randomly thinking today about gender in the English language.
One thing in English that I find is overlooked is gender in ...
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Concept of clitics
Are there any differences between pronominal clitics and clitic pronouns? I wonder whether these two terms are interchangeable or not.
Thanks.
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On the use of possessive pronouns instead of definite articles in AmE
Consider the following examples:
I have to go now, my Uber driver has arrived.
So, have you already learned your ABCs?
I now will put my eggs into the dry ingredients.
All of these are examples of a ...
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Is there reason to believe that English will drop declension of personal pronouns "soon?" [closed]
I am sure I am not alone in having to think about whether to use "I" or "me" etc. and I also I sure I and others get it wrong frequently. What's really the point in retaining these ...
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can a binder bind two bindees where one is in secondary predicate and the other is in third predicate
(1)[Zhangsan] zhidao [ta] zuo de dui.
Zhangsan know he do right
(2)??[Zhangsan] zhidao [ta] zuo le zhejian shiqing.
Zhangsan know he do ASP this thing
Huang1988 proposed that the ...
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Why do two English personal pronouns — "you" and "it" — lack an objective case?
Most English person pronouns have an objective case — I/me, we/us, thou/thee, he/him, she/her, they/them, who/whom. But "you" and "it" have no such form. Did they every have one? ...
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What is the function of a gender distinction in nouns?
In German and some other languages, I understand there are different forms of the definite article 'the' depending on the gender of the noun. Also personal pronouns have different forms depending on ...
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Why does the pronoun and verb order vary in Polish language?
My go nie lubimy - we do not like him
On nie kocha mnie - he does not love me
Why in the first example go is followed by nie lubimy, but in the second sentence we have the opposite: nie kocha followed ...
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why in Polish we change ją to jej when negating the phrase?
ja lubię ją - I like her
ja nie lubię jej - I do not like her
Do I understand correctly what these sentences mean?
If yes, why do we change ją to jej when negating the phrase? In both cases the ...
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What is the difference between plurality and gender?
I have just started creating my own conlang, and I was wondering if anybody could help me. I can't find anything that'll help me differentiate plurality and gender.
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Are WH-determiner, WH-adverb and WH-pronoun mutually exclusive?
I was going through this article. It describes WH-determiners, WH-adverbs and WH-pronouns. Below are examples for each from the article:
WH-determiners
What book are you reading?
Which plane is he ...
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Possessive vs non possesive WH-pronouns
I was going through Jurafsky book. It says following about pronouns in the context of tag set:
Wh-pronouns (what, who, whom, whoever) are used in certain question forms, or act as complementizers (...
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Addressing others using names/titles vs pronouns
In some languages like Japanese, personal pronouns tend to carry strong connotations and are often avoided in favor of names and titles, in both formal and informal contexts.
In others like Finnish, ...
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Reflexive Pronouns and Relative Clauses
At least in my dialect of English, sentences like the following are perfectly grammatical:
The picture of himselfi that Tomi most liked is on the table.
How does one account for the binding here? If ...
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Is it possible to pro-drop/null anaphora in Turkish without any reference to the pronoun at all?
My question is inspired from: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/466749/what-do-we-call-the-process-of-dropping-the-subject-at-the-beginning-of-a-senten
Person 1 >> "Hey, when are ...
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Is there a technical name for when languages use masculine pronouns to refer to both men and women?
I know a little Arabic, and I also know English. They both have the notion of "gender" built into their syntax. I am Persian and I speak Farsi, which does not have "gender" built ...
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Do any languages fail to distinguish "who and "what"?
English distinguishes interrogative pronouns "who" referring to humans and "what" referring to non-humans, and the same distinction is made in Lushootseed, any Bantu languages that ...
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How can you establish that a word is a proform?
A pro-form is a word, substituting for other words, phrases, clauses, or sentences, whose meaning is recoverable from the linguistic or extralinguistic context.
But how do you establish a word as a ...
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Languages with overt determiners AND pronouns/proper nouns
I am currently performing a cross-linguistic investigation of determiner phrases, and I was wondering if there are languages out there where an overt determiner can occur with a pronoun or proper noun,...
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Ambiguity in "Joe and David discussed his plans for tomorrow evening" [duplicate]
Is there a specific term for the ambiguity in the sentence, "Joe and David discussed his plans for tomorrow evening," the ambiguity arising from the use of "his" when it could ...
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Is there a language where there are personal pronouns for the first or second person that have gender?
Is there a language where there are personal pronouns for the first or second person that have gender? Like a feminine "I" or a masculine "you".
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When did the Ivri (Hebrew) possessive pronoun "Shel-y" (של-י) replace the biblical suffix "-y"?
In Modern Hebrew, the possessive pronoun "Shel-y" (של-י) is used for the English possessive pronoun "My".
In Biblical Ivri (עברי), the possessive pronoun for "My" is ...
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Are there any languages with gender neutral pronouns for unknown gender?
There are proposals to introduce in several languages gender-neutral pronouns to refer to groups of mixed gender or single individuals of unknown gender.
Are there examples of existing languages that ...
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Are there languages that don't have this kind of ambiguity?
In the sentence "John told James that he's happy.", the pronoun "he" is ambiguous, since it could refer to either John or James.
Are there any languages which try to solve this ...
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Are there any languages that have a pronoun which is only used to refer to royalty?
I can recall reading an article years ago which claimed that some languages have unused "royal" pronouns. That is, these pronouns were only used to refer to royalty as a show of respect or ...
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Are there languages where pronouns are marked entirely with conjugations?
I know of languages (Arabic in particular comes to mind) where the subject pronoun can be dropped because verb conjugation encodes at least as much information as a pronoun might. I also know that ...
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Finnish Indefinite Pronouns [closed]
I'm looking for a native speaker who could give me their opinion about the following sentences:
1.Joku soitti. Arvaa kuka (se oli)?
2.Joku soitti, mutta en saa-nut nime-stä selvää.
3.Hän haluaa ...
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