Personal Pronouns, Definition, Examples, Types, and Uses

Personal Pronouns

Personal Pronouns: A pronoun is a privileged for us to avoid repeating the same noun again and again in a sentence. Can you imagine what would happen if we used nouns repeatedly in a sentence? Look at these sentences. The Dog is now playing with the Dog’s owner's daughter. The noun representing the dog in a sentence is repetitive-sounding. 

Here come the personal pronouns, It is a short word we use as a simple substitute for the proper name of a person, animal, or thing. When the Personal pronouns come into the picture the above sentence can be written as The dog is now playing with his owner's daughter. Have you understood the basics of how a personal pronoun can be used to avoid the unnecessary use of a noun in a sentence again and again? It's not over yet, In this article, we will learn about the definition of Personal pronouns, personal pronouns examples, and the proper uses.

Personal Pronoun Definition

A personal pronoun is defined as a word used as a substitute for a proper noun that represents particular people or things. A personal pronoun is usually used to replace proper names. A pronoun is typically used to refer to a speaker or to the people or things that a speaker is referring to. 

For example, I, me, you, he, him, she, her, It, we, us, they, and them. These all are personal pronouns used to replace a noun either used as a subject or object in a sentence. The use of these personal pronouns depends on the number, gender, and persons of the noun. While we typically use personal pronouns to refer to people, we can also use them to refer to animals, objects, or concepts too. Let's see some of the examples of a personal pronoun, and how it is used in the subject to replace the noun.

I bought my daughter a new toy, and she loves it.

Come look at my boy! He has climbed to the top of that tree.

So, you might get an idea of how a personal pronoun she and he substitute the use of my daughter and my boy in these two examples.

Types of Personal Pronouns

Personal pronouns can be divided into two types based on the number of the nouns they refer to, i.e singular personal pronouns and plural personal pronouns.  These two types of personal pronouns are further divided into first, second, and third person. Look at the table and observe the basic difference between these two personal pronouns.

Personal pronouns can also be divided into two types based on how they are used, that is either as a subject or as an object in the sentence. These are:

1. Subjective Personal Pronoun

When a personal pronoun is used as a subject in the sentence or when a personal pronoun used in a sentence to replace the subject then it is known as Subjective personal pronouns. These are like I, you, he, she, it, we, and they are subjective personal pronouns. These are used for the subjects of verbs.

2. Objective Personal Pronoun

When a personal pronoun is used as the direct or indirect object of a verb, or as the object of a preposition, it is called an objective personal pronoun. These types of personal pronouns are used to replace the object used as a noun in the sentence. Personal pronouns like you, me, him, her, it, us, and them are objective personal pronouns.

The table below will help you to understand the differences between Subjective and objective personal pronouns.

Use of Personal Pronouns

A personal pronoun can be sometimes contradictory while using, we must have to be aware of the common error occurring while using a personal pronoun in our day-to-day speech.

1. Basically, we know that ‘They’ and ‘Them’ are used to refer to other people or things and are often used as plural words. Whereas ‘They’ is used as a subject, while ‘Them’ is used as an object. It is possible to use ‘They’ and ‘Them’ as singular words to refer to a person of unknown gender or to represent a gender-neutral sentence. For example, Can I conduct a meeting this week? I asked them in an email.
2. In English Grammar, there is no concept of the singular gender-neutral personal pronoun. So, We can use ‘They’ instead of ‘He’ or ‘She’.
3. The subjective pronoun ‘I’ can't be the object of a verb or a preposition. For example, Its a top-secret, keep this between you and I. This is an incorrect statement as here in this sentence ‘I’ is used as the object of a preposition.
4. ‘We’ and ‘Us’ are used to refer to a speaker or author collectively and other people also. Both ‘We’ and ‘Us’ are plural. Whereas ‘We’ is used as a subject, while ‘Us’ is used as an object.
5. We generally use ‘It’ to refer to non-living things, animals of unknown sex or ideas or concepts. ‘It’ is a singular word and can be used as both a subjective personal pronoun or an objective personal pronoun.
6. ‘You’ is the personal pronoun which can be used as either a subject or an object, and it can also be used as a singular or plural form. ‘You’ is generally used to refer to a person or people that isn’t the speaker or author, usually, they are readers or listeners.

Personal Pronouns Examples:

1. I am the winner of a painting competition.
2. You can drive my car home.
3. He will punish you if you do not complete the work.
4. She is the best singer in this whole city.
5. Is it a new phone?
6. We are going to a temple today.
7. They are the winners of a quiz competition.
8. She has kept dinner for me.
9. I can pay you for this shirt.
10. Abhay had been calling him since yesterday night.
11. The delivery boy delivered her pizza at the office.
12. Raman has organized an event for us.
13. Police is catching thieves, not us.
14. Flowers are beautiful, don’t pluck them.
15. There are so many chocolates, you can collect them.

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