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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.
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 ...
By late Middle English, the dual form was lost, and the dative and accusative had merged. [5]: 117 The ours genitive can be seen as early as the 12th century.Ourselves replaced original construction we selfe, us selfum in the 15th century, [6] so that, by the century's end, the Middle English forms of we had solidified into those we use today.
Pages in category "Second-person plural pronouns in English" The following 10 pages are in this category, out of 10 total. This list may not reflect recent changes. Y.
The plural may be used to emphasise the plurality of the attribute, especially in British English but very rarely in American English: a careers advisor, a languages expert. The plural is also more common with irregular plurals for various attributions: women killers are women who kill, whereas woman killers are those who kill women.
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 ]
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.