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Other Types of Pronoun
As well as personal pronouns, there are many other types, which we summarise here.
| Pronoun Type | Members of the Subclass | Example |
| Possessive | mine, yours, his, hers, ours, theirs | The white car is mine |
| Reflexive | myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, oneself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves | He injured himself playing football |
| Reciprocal | each other, one another | They really hate each other |
| Relative | that, which, who, whose, whom, where, when | The book that you gave me was really boring |
| Demonstrative | this, that, these, those | This is a new car |
| Interrogative | who, what, why, where, when, whatever | What did he say to you? |
| Indefinite | anything, anybody, anyone, something, somebody, someone, nothing, nobody, none, no one | There's something in my shoe |
Case and number distinctions do not apply to all pronoun types. In fact, they apply only to personal pronouns, possessive pronouns, and reflexive pronouns. It is only in these types, too, that gender differences are shown (personal he/she, possessive his/hers, reflexive himself/herself). All other types are unvarying in their form.
Many of the pronouns listed above also belong to another word class - the class of determiners. They are pronouns when they occur independently, that is, without a noun following them, as in This is a new car. But when a noun follows them - This car is new - they are determiners. We will look at determiners in the next section.
A major difference between pronouns and nouns generally is that pronouns do not take the or a/an before them. Further, pronouns do not take adjectives before them, except in very restricted constructions involving some indefinite pronouns (a little something, a certain someone).
While the class of nouns as a whole is an open class, the subclass of pronouns is closed.
Numerals
Numerals include all numbers, whether as words or as digits. They may be divided into two major types. CARDINAL numerals include words like:
nought, zero, one, two, 3, fifty-six, 100, a thousand
ORDINAL numerals include
first, 2nd, third, fourth, 500th
We classify numerals as a subclass of nouns because in certain circumstances they can take plurals:
five twos are ten
he's in his eighties
They may also take the:
the fourth of July
a product of the 1960s
And some plural numerals can take an adjective before them, just like other nouns:
the house was built in the late 1960s
he's in his early twenties
the temperature is in the high nineties
In each of our examples, the numerals occur independently, that is, without a noun following them. In these positions, we can classify them as a type of noun because they behave in much the same way as nouns do. Notice, for example, that we can replace the numerals in our examples with common nouns:
| he is in his eighties | ~he is in his bedroom |
| the fourth of July | ~the beginning of July |
| a product of the 1960s | ~a product of the revolution |
Numerals do not always occur independently. They often occur before a noun, as in
one day
three pages
the fourth day of July
In this position, we classify them as determiners, which we will examine in the next section.
Finally, see if you can answer this question:
Is the subclass of numerals open or closed?
Date: 2015-12-17; view: 1095
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