Editing English language (section)

==== Pronouns, case, and person ====

English pronouns conserve many traits of case and gender inflection. The personal pronouns retain a difference between subjective and objective case in most persons (''I/me, he/him, she/her, we/us, they/them'') as well as an animateness distinction in the third person singular (distinguishing ''it'' from the three sets of animate third person singular pronouns) and an optional gender distinction in the animate third person singular (distinguishing between ''she/her'' [feminine], ''[[Singular they|they/them]]'' [neuter], and ''he/him'' [masculine]).<ref name="oedthey">{{OED|they|id=200700}}</ref><ref name="apathey">{{Cite web|title=Singular "They"|url=https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/grammar/singular-they|access-date=24 November 2021|website=APA Style|archive-date=21 October 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201021234745/https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/grammar/singular-they|url-status=live}}</ref> The [[subjective case]] corresponds to the Old English [[nominative case]], and the [[objective case]] is used in the sense both of the previous [[accusative case]] (for a patient, or direct object of a transitive verb), and of the Old English dative case (for a recipient or [[indirect object]] of a transitive verb).{{sfn|Leech|2006|page=69|ps=: "Nominative is a traditional name for the subjective case"}}{{sfn|O'Dwyer|2006|ps=: "English has subjective, objective and possessive cases."}} The subjective is used when the pronoun is the subject of a finite clause, otherwise the objective is used.{{sfn|Greenbaum|Nelson|2002}} While grammarians such as [[Henry Sweet]]{{sfn|Sweet|2014|page=52|ps=: "But in that special class of nouns called personal pronouns we find a totally different system of case-inflection, namely, a '''nominative''' case (he) and an '''objective''' case (him)"}} and [[Otto Jespersen]]{{sfn|Jespersen|2007|pp=173–185}} noted that the English cases did not correspond to the traditional Latin-based system, some contemporary grammars, for example {{harvcoltxt|Huddleston|Pullum|2002}}, retain traditional labels for the cases, calling them nominative and accusative cases respectively.

Possessive pronouns exist in dependent and independent forms; the dependent form functions as a determiner specifying a noun (as in ''my chair''), while the independent form can stand alone as if it were a noun (e.g. ''the chair is mine'').{{sfn|Huddleston|Pullum|2002|page=425–26}} The English system of grammatical person no longer has a distinction between formal and informal pronouns of address (the old second person singular familiar pronoun ''[[thou]]'' acquired a pejorative or inferior tinge of meaning and was abandoned).

Both the second and third persons share pronouns between the plural and singular:

* Plural and singular are always identical (''you'', ''your'', ''yours'') in the second person (except in the reflexive form: ''yourself/yourselves'') in most dialects. Some dialects have introduced innovative second person plural pronouns, such as ''y'all'' (found in [[Southern American English]] and [[African American Vernacular English|African American (Vernacular) English]]), ''youse'' (found in [[Australian English]]), or ''ye'' (in [[Hiberno-English]]).
* In the third person, the ''they/them'' series of pronouns (''they'', ''them'', ''their'', ''theirs'', ''themselves'') are used in both plural and singular, and are the only pronouns available for the plural. In the singular, the ''they/them'' series (sometimes with the addition of the singular-specific reflexive form ''themself'') serve as a gender-neutral set of pronouns, alongside the feminine ''she/her'' series and the masculine ''he/him'' series.<ref name="oedthey" /><ref name="apathey" /><ref name="apawelcome">{{Cite web|url=https://apastyle.apa.org/blog/singular-they|title=Welcome, singular "they"|website=American Psychological Association|access-date=24 November 2021|archive-date=14 February 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200214220442/https://apastyle.apa.org/blog/singular-they|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="pedantthey">{{cite web|last=Kamm|first=Oliver|title=The Pedant: The sheer usefulness of singular 'they' is obvious|access-date=24 November 2021|date=12 December 2015|website=The Times|url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-pedant-the-sheer-usefulness-of-singular-they-is-obvious-3qs05ngflkj|archive-date=19 June 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190619175236/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-pedant-the-sheer-usefulness-of-singular-they-is-obvious-3qs05ngflkj|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="denverthey">{{cite web|url=https://www1.ucdenver.edu/docs/librariesprovider102/default-document-library/resources-for-using-they-as-a-singlular-pronoun.pdf|title=Resources for using "they" as a singular pronoun|website=www1.ucdenver.edu|access-date=24 November 2021|archive-date=25 January 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210125205916/https://www1.ucdenver.edu/docs/librariesprovider102/default-document-library/resources-for-using-they-as-a-singlular-pronoun.pdf|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="chicagothey">{{cite web|title=Chicago Style for the Singular ''They''|date=3 April 2017|url=https://cmosshoptalk.com/2017/04/03/chicago-style-for-the-singular-they/|website=cmosshoptalk.com|access-date=24 November 2021|archive-date=22 February 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200222164116/http://cmosshoptalk.com/2017/04/03/chicago-style-for-the-singular-they/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="themself">{{Cite web|url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/themself|title=Themself|website=merriam-webster.com|access-date=24 November 2021|archive-date=11 November 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201111225310/https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/Themself|url-status=live}}</ref>

{| class="wikitable"
|-
|+ English personal pronouns
|-
! scope="col" | Person
! scope="col" | Subjective case
! scope="col" | Objective case
! scope="col" | Dependent possessive
! scope="col" | Independent possessive
! scope="col" | Reflexive
|-
! scope="row" | 1st p. sg.
| ''I'' || ''me'' || ''my'' || ''mine'' || ''myself''
|-
! scope="row" | 2nd p. sg.
| ''you'' || ''you'' || ''your'' || ''yours'' || ''yourself''
|-
! scope="row" | 3rd p. sg.
| ''he/she/it/[[Singular they|they]]'' || ''him/her/it/them'' || ''his/her/its/their'' || ''his/hers/its/theirs'' || ''himself/herself/itself/themself/themselves''
|-
! scope="row" | 1st p. pl.
| ''we'' || ''us'' || ''our'' || ''ours'' || ''ourselves''
|-
! scope="row" | 2nd p. pl.
| ''you'' || ''you'' || ''your'' || ''yours'' || ''yourselves''
|-
! scope="row" | 3rd p. pl.
| ''they'' || ''them'' || ''their'' || ''theirs'' || ''themselves''
|}

Pronouns are used to refer to entities [[Deixis|deictically]] or [[Anaphoric reference|anaphorically]]. A deictic pronoun points to some person or object by identifying it relative to the speech situation—for example, the pronoun ''I'' identifies the speaker, and the pronoun ''you'', the addressee. Anaphoric pronouns such as ''that'' refer back to an entity already mentioned or assumed by the speaker to be known by the audience, for example in the sentence ''I already told you that''. The reflexive pronouns are used when the oblique argument is identical to the subject of a phrase (e.g. "he sent it to himself" or "she braced herself for impact").{{sfn|Huddleston|Pullum|2002|page=426}}