§ 3. Personal pronouns.
1. The personal pronouns are I, he, she, it, we, you, and they. The personal pronouns have the grammatical categories of person, case, number and (in the third person singular) gender.
The personal pronouns have two cases: the nominative case and the objective case. The nominative case: I, he, she, it, we, you, they. The objective case: me, him, her, it, us, you, them. The objective case of the pronouns I, he, she, we is expressed by suppletive forms.
In colloquial speech me, not I is commonly used as a predicative:
Who is there? — It is me.
The personal pronouns have two numbers, singular (I, he, she, it) and plural (we, they).
The second-person pronoun you is both singular and plural.
The pronouns of the third person he, she, it distinguish gender. Male beings (man, father, uncle, boy etc.) are referred to as he; female beings (woman, mother, aunt, girl etc.) are referred to as she; inanimate things (house, tree, cap etc.) are referred to as it.
Her husband asked a few questions and sat down to read the evening paper. He was a silent man... (Dreiser)
And then he turned and saw the girl... She was a pale, ethereal creature, with wide, spiritual eyes and a wealth of golden hair. (London)
He did not know what to do with his cap, and was stuffing if into his coat pocket... (London.)
As some nouns denote animate beings of either sex, masculine or feminine (friend, teacher, servant, cousin etc.), personal pronouns are often used to specify them:
"Tell your servant that he must not use such words to Hendrike, Mr. Allan," Stella said to me. (Haggard)
2. Personal pronouns may have different functions in the sentence, those of subject, object, and predicative:
I am not free to resume the interrupted chain of my reflections till bedtime… (Ch. Bronte) (subject)
He arranged to meet her at the 96th Street station... (Wilson) (OBJECT)
"Who's there?" "It's me." "Who's me?" "George Jackson, sir." (Twain) (PREDICATIVE)
But I think that was him I spoke to. (Cronin) (predicative)
§ 4. Possessive pronouns.
1. Possessive pronouns have the same distinctions of person, number and gender as personal pronouns.
2. Possessive pronouns have two forms, namely the dependent (or conjoint) form and the independent (or absolute) form.
Conjoint forms of possessive pronouns
1st person 2nd person 3rd person
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