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The membership we is a simultaneous reference to the individual, and to the collective of which the individual is a member. If ants or hive bees could use English, they might use the pronoun we almost exclusively. Human cultures can be categorized as communal or individualist; [14] the membership we aligns more with a communal culture. The ...
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 ...
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language discusses the prescriptivist argument that they is a plural pronoun and that the use of they with a singular "antecedent" therefore violates the rule of agreement between antecedent and pronoun, but takes the view that they, though primarily plural, can also be singular in a secondary extended sense ...
Some examples: John hid and we couldn't find him. (John is the antecedent of him) After he lost his job, my father set up a small grocer's shop. (my father is the antecedent of he, although it comes after the pronoun) We invited Mary and Tom. He came but she didn't. (Mary is the antecedent of she, and Tom of he) I loved those bright orange socks.
First person includes the speaker (English: I, we), second person is the person or people spoken to (English: your or you), and third person includes all that are not listed above (English: he, she, it, they). [1] It also frequently affects verbs, and sometimes nouns or possessive relationships.
Personal pronouns in Early Modern English; Nominative Oblique Genitive Possessive; 1st person singular I me my/mine [# 1] mine plural we us our ours 2nd person singular informal thou thee thy/thine [# 1] thine plural informal ye you your yours formal you 3rd person singular he/she/it him/her/it his/her/his (it) [# 2] his/hers/his [# 2] plural ...
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.
Some people refuse to use the epicene pronoun they when referring to individuals on the basis that it is primarily a plural pronoun instead of a singular pronoun. [9] [10] [11] However, the online edition of the Oxford English Dictionary records usage of they "referring to an individual generically or indefinitely", with examples dating to 2008 ...