Okuzeka
Linguistics & Grammar vocabulary · Parts of Speech

Pronoun

Meaning in linguistics & grammar, with examples

/ˈprəʊnaʊn/nounCore term

In linguistics & grammar, pronoun means: A word used in place of a noun or noun phrase so that it does not have to be repeated, such as she, it, them, mine, who or myself.

In Turkish: zamir, adıl

How it is used

Teachers cover subject pronouns (I, he), object pronouns (me, him), possessive pronouns (mine), reflexive pronouns (myself) and relative pronouns (who, which). A pronoun refers back to its antecedent.

Example sentences

  1. Turkish has one third-person pronoun, 'o', where English has he, she and it.

  2. The pronoun 'it' in the second sentence refers back to the report.

Common collocations

  • personal pronoun
  • relative pronoun
  • reflexive pronoun
  • object pronoun
  • gender-neutral pronoun
  • nounA word that names a person, place, thing, idea or feeling and can usually be the subject or object of a verb, such as teacher, Ankara, chair or freedom.
  • noun phraseA group of words built around a noun or pronoun that works as one unit, often as subject or object, such as 'the tall man in the blue coat'.
  • deixisThe use of words whose meaning depends on who is speaking, where and when, such as I, you, here, there, now, this and yesterday.
  • determinerA word that comes before a noun to show which one or how much is meant, such as the, a, this, my, some, every or two.
  • part of speechOne of the classes into which words are grouped by their grammatical behaviour, such as noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, preposition and conjunction.

More terms: Parts of Speech

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