The Pronouns Plan: Reading the text New words and discussion of the text

The Pronouns
Plan:
1. Reading the text
2. New words and discussion of the text.
3. Interrogative pronouns

Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not consider them to form a single class, in view of the variety of functions they perform cross-linguistically.The fact that people use a small number of pronouns to refer to a large number of possible participants or a large number of pronouns to indicate one participant, and still manage to communicate effectively, may at first seem unremarkable. Since pronouns are the main grammatical devices by which acts of speaking are tied to the persons who are engaged in the conversation, many linguists investigate how pronouns are employed as a means of coming to understand the ways that speech and society are related. Pronouns, which are always mentioned as one of the traditional word classes, represent a very heterogeneous collection of ‘closed-class words with nominal function’ . The definitions found in traditional grammars vary between authors, but they share a vagueness and inconsistency of approach which has not endeared them to modern linguists A pronoun is a word used instead of a noun or noun-equivalent (i.e. a word which is acting as a noun). Examples: this, who, mine. The expression ‘central pronouns’ for personal , reflexive and possessive pronouns suggests that these subclasses have a number of features in common and that other, more peripheral pronominal subclasses can be characterized by properties not shared by all members. It appears that the class of pronouns is conceptualized by other authors e.g. Huddleston as something like a ‘cluster’ or ‘radial category’ with a prototypical core represented by personal pronouns. With regard to their referential functions, those pronouns are traditionally described in terms of deixis and anaphora. English pronouns are words which stand for a noun, a whole noun phrase, or several noun phrases. They can also refer directly to some aspect of the situation surrounding the speaker or writer. In each case, the meaning expressed is much less specific than that found in phrases containing nouns .