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Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as I), second person (as you), or third person (as he, she, it). Personal pronouns may also take different forms depending on number (usually singular or plural), grammatical or natural gender, case, and formality.
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 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.
Similarly, us was used in Old English as the accusative and dative plural of we, from PIE *nes-. [4] The following table shows the old English first-person plural and dual pronouns: Old English, first-person dual and plural [ 5 ] : 117
If the latter meaning is intended, the word (though singular in form) may be treated as if it were a plural, in that it may take a plural verb and be replaced with a plural pronoun: (in British English) the government are considering their position (alternatively the government is considering its position). See synesis.
Languages with numerical classifiers such as Chinese and Japanese lack any significant grammatical number at all, though they are likely to have plural personal pronouns. Some languages (like Mele-Fila) distinguish between a plural and a greater plural. A greater plural refers to an abnormally large number for the object of discussion.
Y'all is a contraction of you all.The spelling you-all in second-person plural pronoun usage was first recorded in 1824. [4] [5] The earliest two attestations with the actual spelling y'all are from 1856, [6] and in the Southern Literary Messenger (published in Richmond, Virginia) in 1858. [7]
You comes from the Proto-Germanic demonstrative base *juz-, *iwwiz from Proto-Indo-European * yu-(second-person plural pronoun). [1] Old English had singular, dual, and plural second-person pronouns. The dual form was lost by the twelfth century, [ 2 ] : 117 and the singular form was lost by the early 1600s. [ 3 ]