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pronouns (who - what), relative pronouns (who - which), and interrogative pronouns (who - what).
Subclasses of pronouns and their functions
§ 216. Semantically all pronouns fall into the following subclasses:
I. Personal pronouns are noun-pronouns, indicating persons (I, you, he, we, they) or non-persons (it, they)
from the point of view of their relations to the speaker. Thus I
(me) indicates the speaker himself, we (us)
indicates the speaker together with some other person or persons, you indicates the person or persons addressed,
while he, she, they (him, her, them) indicate persons (or things) which are neither the speaker nor the persons
addressed to by the speaker.
Personal pronouns have the category of person, number, case (nominative and objective), and gender, the
latter is to be found in the 3rd person only: masculine and feminine is he - him, she - her; neuter case-forms it -
it coincide.
The nominative case form is generally used as subject of the sentence, or predicative in the compound
nominal predicate in sentences like: It was I who did it. However, in colloquial style the form of the objective
case is preferable, especially in sentences of the type: It is me.
Both the nominative and the objective case forms are used after the conjunctions as and than in comparative
constructions:
She is as stout as I now;
Last year he looked much older than I;
She is as old as me;
He was a better friend to you than me.
The nominative case-form (as well as the objective) is used in elliptical sentences: “Who is there? – I”.
“Who did it? – Me”.
The objective case form is used mainly as an object (with or without a preposition), occasionally as an
attribute in prepositional phrases: Give me your hand; Were you speaking about me?; The better half of me
protested.
The fact that semantically personal pronouns indicate persons or things restricts their functioning as
adverbial modifiers. However, they may occur in this function in a prepositional phrase: He stood close to me;
Keep behind me.
The pronoun you implies a person, sometimes an animal, or an inanimate object, when the latter is
personified: Glad to see you here, Mary; Oh, Cat, you are as clever as a man ...
Its singular and plural forms, as well as the objective case forms, coincide: Are you in, John?; Where are you
going, children? The plural and the singular forms are differentiated only through their co-referents (denoted by
John, children), as both agree with the verb in the plural.
Historically, the form you is the plural form, the singular form being thou (the objective case thee). It is no
longer used nowadays except in poetry and other literary texts, where it produces a particular stylistic effect:
“So”, said the messenger, “Then thou are the spokesman.”
The pronouns he (him), she (her) usually refer to persons, he - to male, she - to female. However some other
phenomena are often referred to as he or she in poetry and fiction. Those referred to as he are: sun, wind, fear,
love; those referred to as she are: earth, moon, ship, boat, car, hope, justice, modesty and some others. Also
countries, especially native countries, are referred to as she: England, France, Italy, the USA, etc.
I was born in Ireland. She is the best country for me.
The nominative case forms are used as subject or predicative; when used as predicatives both nominative
and objective case forms are possible: At last he lost his way; It was he; It is him. It keeps true also for
comparative constructions: She did it better than he (him).
The pronoun it can perform functions varying so greatly that three statuses of this word should be
differentiated. They are the personal pronoun it, the impersonal pronoun it, and the demonstrative
pronoun it.
The personal pronoun it refers to non-persons, that is, to animals, things and abstract notions, as in: