Editing English grammar (section)

===Pronouns===
{{Main|English pronouns}}
[[Pronoun]]s are a relatively small, closed class of words that function in the place of nouns or noun phrases. They include [[personal pronoun]]s, [[demonstrative pronoun]]s, [[relative pronoun]]s, [[interrogative pronouns]], and some others, mainly [[indefinite pronoun]]s. The full set of English pronouns is presented in the following table. Nonstandard, informal and archaic forms are in ''italics''.
{| class="wikitable"
! colspan="3" rowspan="2" |
![[Nominative case|Nominative]]
![[Accusative case|Accusative]]
![[Reflexive pronoun|Reflexive]]
!Independent [[Genitive case|genitive]]
!Dependent genitive
|-
!(subject)
!(object)
!
! colspan="2" |(possessive)
|- valign="top"
! rowspan="2" |First-person
! colspan="2" |Singular
|[[I (pronoun)|I]]
|me
|myself
|mine
|my<br/>''mine'' (before vowel)<br/>''me'' (esp. BrE)
|- valign="top"
! colspan="2" |Plural
|[[we]]
|us
|ourselves<br/>''ourself''
|ours
|our
|- valign="top"
! rowspan="5" |Second-person
! rowspan="2" |Singular
!Standard
|[[you]]
|you
|yourself
|yours
|your
|- valign="top"
!''Archaic informal''
|''[[thou]]''
|''thee''
|''thyself''
|''thine''
|''thy<br/>thine'' (before vowel)
|- valign="top"
! rowspan="3" |Plural
!Standard
|you
|you
|yourselves
|yours
|your
|- valign="top"
!''Archaic''
|''ye''
|''you''
|''yourselves''
|''yours''
|''your''
|- valign="top"
!''Nonstandard''
|''ye<br/>you all<br/>y'all<br/>youse''<br/>etc. (see above)
|''ye<br/>you all<br/>y'all<br/>youse''
|''yeerselves<br/>y'all's'' (or ''y'alls'')<br/>''selves''
|''yeers<br/>y'all's'' (or ''y'alls'')
|''yeer<br/>y'all's'' (or ''y'alls'')
|- valign="top"
! rowspan="5" |Third-person
! rowspan="4" |Singular
!Masculine
|[[He (pronoun)|he]]
|him
|himself
| colspan="2" |his
|- valign="top"
!Feminine
|[[She (pronoun)|she]]
|her
|herself
|hers
|her
|- valign="top"
!Neuter
|[[It (pronoun)|it]]
|it
|itself
|''its''
|its
|- valign="top"
![[Epicene]]
|[[Singular they|they]]
|them
|themselves<br/>''themself''
|theirs
|their
|- valign="top"
! colspan="2" |Plural
|[[they]]
|them
|themselves
|theirs
|their
|- valign="top"
! rowspan="2" |Generic
! colspan="2" |Formal
|[[One (pronoun)|one]] 
|one
|oneself
|
|one's
|- valign="top"
! colspan="2" |''Informal''
|''you''
|''you''
|''yourself''
|''your''
|''your''
|- valign="top"
! rowspan="3" |Wh-
! rowspan="2" |Relative and
interrogative
!For persons
|[[Who (pronoun)|who]]
|whom<br/>''who''
|
|whose<sup>†</sup>
|whose
|-
!Non-personal
|what
|what
|
|
|
|-
! colspan="2" |Relative only
|which
|which
|
|
|
|-
! colspan="3" |Reciprocal
|
|each other<br/>one another
|
|
|
|-
! colspan="3" |[[Dummy pronoun|Dummy]]
|there
it
|it
|
|
|
|}
<sup>†</sup> Interrogative only.

====Personal====
{{Main|English personal pronouns}}
The personal pronouns of modern standard English are presented in the table above. They are ''I, you, she, he, it, we'', and ''they''. The personal pronouns are so-called not because they apply to persons (which other pronouns also do), but because they participate in the [[Grammatical person|system of grammatical person]] (1st, 2nd, 3rd).

The second-person forms such as ''you'' are used with both singular and plural reference. In the Southern United States, [[y'all]] (you all) is used as a plural form, and various other phrases such as ''you guys'' are used in other places. An archaic set of second-person pronouns used for singular reference is ''[[thou]], thee, thyself, thy, thine'', which are still used in religious services and can be seen in older works, such as Shakespeare's—in such texts, the ''you'' set of pronouns are used for plural reference, or with singular reference as a formal [[T–V distinction|V-form]]. ''You'' can also be used as an [[indefinite pronoun]], referring to a person in general (see [[generic you|generic ''you'']]), compared to the more formal alternative, ''[[one (pronoun)|one]]'' (reflexive ''oneself'', possessive ''one's'').

The third-person singular forms are differentiated according to the gender of the referent. For example, ''she'' is used to refer to a woman, sometimes a female animal, and sometimes an object to which feminine characteristics are attributed, such as a ship or a country. A man, and sometimes a male animal, is referred to using ''he''. In other cases, ''it'' can be used. (See [[Gender in English]].) The word ''it'' can also be used as a [[dummy subject]], concerning abstract ideas like time, weather, etc., or a [[Dummy pronoun#Dummy objects|dummy object]] of a verb or preposition.

The third-person form ''they'' is used with both plural and singular [[referent]]s. Historically, [[Singular they|singular ''they'']] was restricted to [[quantifier (linguistics)|quantificational]] constructions such as ''Each employee should clean their desk'' and referential cases where the referent's gender was unknown. However, it is increasingly used when the referent's gender is irrelevant or when the referent is neither male nor female.

The possessive determiners such as ''my'' are used as determiners together with nouns, as in ''my old man'', ''some of his friends''. The second possessive forms like ''mine'' are used when they do not qualify a noun: as pronouns, as in ''mine is bigger than yours'', and as predicates, as in ''this one is mine''. Note also the construction ''a friend of mine'' (meaning "someone who is my friend"). See [[English possessive]] for more details.

====Demonstrative ====
The [[demonstrative pronoun]]s of English are ''this'' (plural ''these''), and ''that'' (plural ''those''), as in ''these are good, I like that''. All four words can also be used as determiners (followed by a noun), as in ''those cars''. They can also form the alternative pronominal expressions ''this/that one'', ''these/those ones''.

==== Interrogative ====
The [[interrogative pronoun]]s are ''who'', ''what'', and ''which'' (all of them can take the suffix ''[[-ever]]'' for emphasis). The pronoun ''who'' refers to a person or people; it has an oblique form ''[[whom]]'' (though in informal contexts this is usually replaced by ''who''), and a possessive form (pronoun or determiner) ''whose''. The pronoun ''what'' refers to things or abstracts. The word ''which'' is used to ask about alternatives from what is seen as a closed set: ''which (of the books) do you like best?'' (It can also be an interrogative determiner: ''which book?''; this can form the alternative pronominal expressions ''which one'' and ''which ones''.) ''Which'', ''who'', and ''what'' can be either singular or plural, although ''who'' and ''what'' often take a singular verb regardless of any supposed number. For more information see [[Who (pronoun)|''who'']].

In Old and Middle English, the roles of the three words were different from their roles today. "The interrogative pronoun ''hwā'' 'who, what' had only singular forms and also only distinguished between non-neuter and neuter, the neuter nominative form being ''hwæt''".<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Cambridge history of the English language: Volume I|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1992|isbn=|editor-last=Hogg|editor-first=Richard|location=Cambridge|pages=144|oclc=}}</ref> Note that neuter and non-neuter refers to the grammatical gender system of the time, rather than the so-called natural gender system of today. A small holdover of this is the ability of relative (but not interrogative) ''whose'' to refer to non-persons (e.g., ''the car whose door won't open'').

All the interrogative pronouns can also be used as relative pronouns, though ''what'' is quite limited in its use;<ref name="Huddleston phrasal genitive" /> see below for more details.

====Relative====
{{Main|English relative clauses}}
{{For|"who/whom" and related forms|Who (pronoun)}}
The main [[relative pronoun]]s in English are ''[[who (pronoun)|who]]'' (with its derived forms ''whom'' and ''whose''), ''which'', and ''that''.<ref>Some linguists consider ''that'' in such sentences to be a [[complementizer]] rather than a relative pronoun. See [[English relative clauses#That as relativizer instead of relative pronoun|English relative clauses: Status of ''that'']].</ref>

The relative pronoun ''which'' refers to things rather than persons, as in ''the shirt, which used to be red, is faded''. For persons, ''who'' is used (''the man who saw me was tall''). The [[oblique case]] form of ''who'' is ''whom'', as in ''the man whom I saw was tall'', although in informal [[Register (sociolinguistics)|registers]] ''who'' is commonly used in place of ''whom''.

The possessive form of ''who'' is ''whose'' (for example, ''the man whose car is missing''); however the use of ''whose'' is not restricted to persons (one can say ''an idea whose time has come'').

The word ''that'' as a relative pronoun is normally found only in [[restrictive relative clause]]s (unlike ''which'' and ''who'', which can be used in both restrictive and unrestrictive clauses). It can refer to either persons or things, and cannot follow a preposition. For example, one can say ''the song that'' [or ''which''] ''I listened to yesterday'', but ''the song to which'' [not ''to that''] ''I listened yesterday''. The relative pronoun ''that'' is usually pronounced with a reduced vowel ([[schwa]]), and hence differently from the demonstrative ''that'' (see [[Weak and strong forms in English]]). If ''that'' is not the subject of the relative clause, it can be omitted (''the song I listened to yesterday'').

The word ''what'' can be used to form a [[free relative clause]] – one that has no antecedent and that serves as a complete noun phrase in itself, as in ''I like what he likes''. The words ''whatever'' and ''whichever'' can be used similarly, in the role of either pronouns (''whatever he likes'') or determiners (''whatever book he likes''). When referring to persons, ''who(ever)'' (and ''whom(ever)'') can be used in a similar way.

===={{Anchor|There as pronoun}}"There"====
The word ''there'' is used as a pronoun in some sentences, playing the role of a [[dummy subject]], normally of an [[intransitive verb]]. The "logical subject" of the verb then appears as a [[complement (linguistics)|complement]] after the verb.

This use of ''there'' occurs most commonly with forms of the verb ''be'' in [[existential clause]]s, to refer to the presence or existence of something. For example: ''There is a heaven''; ''There are two cups on the table''; ''There have been a lot of problems lately''. It can also be used with other verbs: ''There exist two major variants''; ''There occurred a very strange incident''.

The dummy subject takes the [[grammatical number|number]] (singular or plural) of the logical subject (complement), hence it takes a plural verb if the complement is plural. In informal English, however, the [[contraction (grammar)|contraction]] ''there's'' is often used for both singular and plural.<ref>{{Harvnb|Fowler|2015|p=813}}</ref>

The dummy subject can undergo [[inversion (linguistics)|inversion]], ''Is there a test today?'' and ''Never has there been a man such as this''. It can also appear without a corresponding logical subject, in short sentences and [[question tag]]s: ''There wasn't a discussion, was there? There was''.

The word ''there'' in such sentences has sometimes been analyzed as an [[adverb]], or as a dummy [[Predicate (grammar)|predicate]], rather than as a pronoun.<ref>For a treatment of ''there'' as a dummy predicate, based on the analysis of the [[copula (linguistics)|copula]], see [[Andrea Moro|Moro, A.]], ''The Raising of Predicates. Predicative Noun Phrases and the Theory of Clause Structure'', ''Cambridge Studies in Linguistics'', 80, Cambridge University Press, 1997.</ref> However, its identification as a pronoun is most consistent with its behavior in inverted sentences and question tags as described above.

Because the word ''there'' can also be a [[Deixis|deictic]] adverb (meaning "at/to that place"), a sentence like ''There is a river'' could have either of two meanings: "a river exists" (with ''there'' as a pronoun), and "a river is in that place" (with ''there'' as an adverb). In speech, the adverbial ''there'' would be given [[stress (linguistics)|stress]], while the pronoun would not – in fact, the pronoun is often pronounced as a [[weak and strong forms in English|weak form]], {{IPA|/ðə(r)/}}.

==== Reciprocal ====
The English [[reciprocal pronoun]]s are ''each other'' and ''one another''. Although they are written with a space, they're best thought of as single words. No consistent distinction in meaning or use can be found between them. Like the reflexive pronouns, their use is limited to contexts where an [[Antecedent (grammar)|antecedent]] precedes it. In the case of the reciprocals, they need to appear in the same clause as the antecedent.<ref name="Huddleston phrasal genitive" />

====Other====
Other pronouns in English are often identical in form to [[English determiners|determiners]] (especially [[quantifier (linguistics)|quantifiers]]), such as ''many'', ''a little'', etc. Sometimes, the pronoun form is different, as with ''none'' (corresponding to the determiner ''no''), ''nothing'', ''everyone'', ''somebody'', etc. Many examples are listed as [[indefinite pronoun]]s. Another indefinite (or impersonal) pronoun is ''[[one (pronoun)|one]]'' (with its reflexive form ''oneself'' and possessive ''one's''), which is a more formal alternative to [[generic you|generic ''you'']].<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|url=http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/one|title=''One'' Definition|dictionary=[[dictionary.com]]|access-date=18 June 2015}}</ref>