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Pronoun

A pronoun is a word that is used instead of a noun.

e.g., he, she, they, it, his, her, him, their, them, its.

The purpose of using a pronoun instead of a noun is generally to avoid the repetition of a noun. See the following small paragraph as an example.

John is a twenty-year-old boy. John lives in a small village. John loves the people of his village. John always helps the people of the village. John realizes that there is no doctor in the village who can treat the people suffering from various illnesses. John decides to study biology because John wants to become a doctor to provide medical services to people.

In the above paragraph, the noun ‘John’ is used repetitively in the paragraph. It comes again and again in every sentence and the paragraph looks awkward. To avoid this repetition, a pronoun ‘he’ should be used instead of the noun ‘John’, as follows:

John is a twenty-year-old boy. He lives in a small village. He loves the people of his village. He always helps the people of the village. He realizes that there is no doctor in the village who can treat the people suffering from various illnesses. He decides to study biology because he wants to become a doctor to provide medical services to people.

In the above paragraph, using the pronoun ‘he’ instead of using the noun ‘John’ again and again has made the paragraph look perfect.

It is important to avoid the repetition or redundancy of words to a possible extent. Since a noun is a name of a person, thing or place, its repetition looks comparatively more prominent and thus, looks odd in written expressions. Therefore, to minimize the repetition of a noun, a pronoun is used.

The usage of a pronoun is essential for grammatical as well as presentational accuracy of written and spoken expressions. There are a number of pronouns that can be used instead of a noun. See the following examples of commonly used pronouns.

Examples: He, she, it, they, you, I, we, who, him, her, them, me, us, whom, his, its, their, your, mine, our and whose, myself, himself, herself, yourself, which, this, that these, those. etc. 

See the following simple examples, where the red word is a pronoun, and the blue word is the concerned noun.

  • David is an engineer. He works in a factory where he repairs machines. He likes his profession.
  • The kids are playing in the room. They are dancing and laughing.  They look quite happy. 
  • A girl was crying in the street. I asked her why she was crying. She replied that she had no food to eat. I gave her some food. She ate the food and became happy.
  • I saw a dog in the garden. It was sleeping. Suddenly, it woke up and started to play with a ball.

The pronouns have the following six types:

  • Personal Pronouns:  e.g. He, she, I, you, they, it, him, her, them, me, who, whom.
  • Possessive Pronouns: e.g., His, hers, yours, theirs, mine, ours.
  • Reflexive Pronouns: e.g., Himself, herself, themselves, yourself, myself, ourselves, itself.
  • Reciprocal Pronouns: e.g., each other, one another.
  • Relative Pronouns: e.g., who, whom, whose, which, that.
  • Demonstrative Pronouns: e.g., this, these, that, those.

To read the types of pronouns and their usage in detail, click here.

 



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