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What is a Pronoun?


What is a Pronoun?

pronoun (noun): a word that takes the place of or represents a noun
Pronouns are small words that take the place of a noun. We can use a pronoun instead of a noun. Pronouns are words like: heyouoursthemselvessomeeach... If we didn't have pronouns, we would have to repeat a lot of nouns. We would have to say things like:
  • Do you like the manager? I don't like the manager. The manager's not friendly.
With pronouns, we can say:
  • Do you like the manager? I don't like himHe's not friendly.
A pronoun is a small word with a big job. In fact, a pronoun can take the place of an entire noun phrase. In this way, pronouns help us use fewer words and avoid repetition.
In the sentence "Please give this letter to Rosemary", we can replace "this letter" with "it" and "Rosemary" with "her", as you see below:
Please givethis lettertoRosemary.
Please giveittoher.
In a conversation, the speakers normally use pronouns to address each other: I speak to youYou speak to me. When we talk about John, we don't keep repeating John's name. We say he or him. If we talk about a thing, we can use the pronoun it.
A pronoun represents the person or thing that we are talking about (as long as we know which person or thing we are talking about). We don't usually start a discourse with a pronoun. We start with a noun and then move on to use a pronoun to avoid repeating the noun.
By "noun", we really mean: noun (food)name (Tara)gerund (swimming)noun phrase (twelve red roses). We can replace even a long noun phrase such as "the car that we saw crashing into the bus" with the simple pronoun "it".
Here are some examples of noun phrases and the pronouns that could replace them:
noun (phrase)pronoun
the carit
Anthonyhe
the big woman with black hairshe
swimmingit
learning Englishit
almost all French peoplethey
my wife and Iwe
pro + noun = "on behalf of" + noun
There are different types of pronoun, but they all have the same job - to represent a noun (phrase).

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