What are Personal Pronouns?
About the video
Personal pronouns are the words that denote names of a particular person, animal, or an object. A witty grammarian has called them ‘stunt doubles’ of English Grammar.
Personal pronouns provide us the following information:
The Person-------Who is addressing?
The number-----Is the pronoun in question singular or plural?
The gender------Is the pronoun in question masculine, feminine or neuter?
Examples: She----third, singular, feminine
We---first, plural, neuter
There are three cases of personal pronouns:
SUBJECTIVE CASE In subjective case personal pronoun is the ‘subject’ and the ‘doer of action’ in the sentence. It takes the place of a noun.
- 1st person----I (sg), we (pl)
- 2nd person----you (sg), you (pl)
- 3rd person----he, she, it (sg), they (pl)
E.g.--I did my work----Here ‘I’ is the doer of the action
OBJECTIVE CASE Here the personal pronoun is the ‘object’ and the ‘receiver of action’ of the sentence. It gets affected by the action done by the subject.
- 1st person----me (sg), us (pl)
- 2nd person----you (sg), you (pl)
- 3rd person----him, her, it (sg), them (pl)
E.g.---Why are you glaring at me?---Here ‘me’ is the receiver of the action.
POSSESSIVE CASE Possessive pronouns replace nouns and show ownership. They never take an apostrophe.
- 1st person----mine (sg), 0urs (pl)
- 2nd person----yours (sg), yours (pl)
- 3rd person----his, hers, its (sg), theirs (pl)
E.g.---This building is theirs----The word theirs shows possession. Personal pronouns enable us to write with precision and economy, without making our writing and speaking cumbersome due to repeated usage of nouns.