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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.
The basic relative pronouns are considered to be who, which and that, but an alternative analysis of that as a relativizer is presented in a succeeding section. The relative pronoun comes at the very start of the relative clause unless it is preceded by a fronted preposition: "The bed on which I was lying".
The element in the main clause that the relative pronoun in the relative clause stands for (house in the above example) is the antecedent of that pronoun.In most cases the antecedent is a nominal (noun or noun phrase), though the pronoun can also refer to a whole proposition, as in "The train was late, which annoyed me greatly", where the antecedent of the relative pronoun which is the clause ...
A clause typically contains a subject (a noun phrase) and a predicate (a verb phrase in the terminology used above; that is, a verb together with its objects and complements). A dependent clause also normally contains a subordinating conjunction (or in the case of relative clauses, a relative pronoun, or phrase containing one).
The interrogative words who, whom, whose, what and which are interrogative pronouns when used in the place of a noun or noun phrase. In the question Who is the leader?, the interrogative word who is a interrogative pronoun because it stands in the place of the noun or noun phrase the question prompts (e.g. the king or the woman with the crown).
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 ...
A pro-form is a type of function word or expression that stands in for (expresses the same content as) another word, phrase, clause or sentence where the meaning is recoverable from the context. [4] In English, pronouns mostly function as pro-forms, but there are pronouns that are not pro-forms and pro-forms that are not pronouns. [5] [p. 239]
A simple sentence consists of only one clause. A compound sentence consists of two or more independent clauses. A complex sentence has at least one independent clause plus at least one dependent clause. [1] A set of words with no independent clause may be an incomplete sentence, also called a sentence fragment.