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The English pronouns form a relatively small category of words in Modern English whose primary semantic function is that of a pro-form for a noun phrase. [1] Traditional grammars consider them to be a distinct part of speech, while most modern grammars see them as a subcategory of noun , contrasting with common and proper nouns .
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (glossed PRO) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase.. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not consider them to form a single class, in view of the variety of functions they perform cross-linguistically.
The English personal pronouns are a subset of English pronouns taking various forms according to number, person, case and grammatical gender. Modern English has very little inflection of nouns or adjectives, to the point where some authors describe it as an analytic language, but the Modern English system of personal pronouns has preserved some of the inflectional complexity of Old English and ...
English has the following quantifier pronouns: Uncountable (thus, with a singular verb form) enough – Enough is enough. little – Little is known about this period of history. less – Less is known about this period of history. much – Much was discussed at the meeting. more (also countable, plural) – More is better.
The history of English grammars [1] [2] begins late in the sixteenth century with the Pamphlet for Grammar by William Bullokar. In the early works, the structure and rules of English grammar were based on those of Latin. A more modern approach, incorporating phonology, was introduced in the nineteenth century.
second-person pronouns normally refer to the person or persons being addressed (as the English you); in the plural they may also refer to the person or persons being addressed together with third parties. third-person pronouns normally refer to third parties other than the speaker or the person being addressed (as the English he, she, it, they).
Early Modern English and Late Modern English, also called Present-Day English (PDE), differ essentially in vocabulary. Late Modern English has many more words, arising from the Industrial Revolution and technologies that created a need for new words, as well as international development of the language.
One of the most common uses of dummy pronouns is with weather verbs, such as in the phrases "it is snowing" or "it is hot."[11]In these sentences, the verb to rain is usually considered semantically impersonal, even though it appears as syntactically intransitive; in this view, the required it in "it is snowing" is to be considered a dummy word.