Singular theySingular they, along with its inflected or derivative forms, them, their, theirs and themselves (also themself, and theirself), is a gender-neutral third-person pronoun. It typically occurs with an indeterminate antecedent, in sentences such as: "Somebody left their umbrella in the office. Could you please let them know where they can get it?" "My personal rule is to never trust anyone who says that they had a good time in high school." "The patient should be told at the outset how much they will be required to pay.
It (pronoun)In Modern English, it is a singular, neuter, third-person pronoun. In Modern English, it has only three shapes representing five word forms: it: the nominative (subjective) and accusative (objective) forms. (The accusative case is also called the "oblique".) its: the dependent and independent genitive (possessive) forms itself: the reflexive form Historically, though, the morphology is more complex. Old English had a single third-person pronoun – from the Proto-Germanic demonstrative base *khi-, from PIE *ko- "this" – which had a plural and three genders in the singular.
English possessiveIn English, possessive words or phrases exist for nouns and most pronouns, as well as some noun phrases. These can play the roles of determiners (also called possessive adjectives when corresponding to a pronoun) or of nouns. For nouns, noun phrases, and some pronouns, the possessive is generally formed with the suffix -s, but in some cases just with the addition of an apostrophe to an existing s. This form is sometimes called the Saxon genitive, reflecting the suffix's derivation from Old English.
PronounIn linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. 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. An example of a pronoun is "you", which can be either singular or plural. Subtypes include personal and possessive pronouns, reflexive and reciprocal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, relative and interrogative pronouns, and indefinite pronouns.
English pluralsEnglish nouns are inflected for grammatical number, meaning that, if they are of the countable type, they generally have different forms for singular and plural. This article discusses the variety of ways in which English plural nouns are formed from the corresponding singular forms, as well as various issues concerning the usage of singulars and plurals in English. For plurals of pronouns, see English personal pronouns. Phonological transcriptions provided in this article are for Received Pronunciation and General American.
Agreement (linguistics)In linguistics, agreement or concord (abbreviated ) occurs when a word changes form depending on the other words to which it relates. It is an instance of inflection, and usually involves making the value of some (such as gender or person) "agree" between varied words or parts of the sentence. For example, in Standard English, one may say I am or he is, but not "I is" or "he am". This is because English grammar requires that the verb and its subject agree in person.
One (pronoun)One is an English language, gender-neutral, indefinite pronoun that means, roughly, "a person". For purposes of verb agreement it is a third-person singular pronoun, though it sometimes appears with first- or second-person reference. It is sometimes called an impersonal pronoun. It is more or less equivalent to the Scots "a body", the French pronoun on, the German/Scandinavian man, and the Spanish uno. It can take the possessive form one's and the reflexive form oneself, or it can adopt those forms from the generic he with his and himself.
Grammatical personIn linguistics, grammatical person is the grammatical distinction between deictic references to participant(s) in an event; typically, the distinction is between the speaker (first person), the addressee (second person), and others (third person). A language's set of pronouns is typically defined by grammatical person. First person includes the speaker (English: I, we), second person is the person or people spoken to (English: thou or you ), and third person includes all that are not listed above (English: he, she, it, they).
Reflexive pronounA reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that refers to another noun or pronoun (its antecedent) within the same sentence. In the English language specifically, a reflexive pronoun will end in -self or -selves, and refer to a previously named noun or pronoun (myself, yourself, ourselves, themselves, etc.). English intensive pronouns, used for emphasis, take the same form. In generative grammar, a reflexive pronoun is an anaphor that must be bound by its antecedent (see binding).
PossessiveA possessive or ktetic form (abbreviated or ; from possessivus; κτητικός) is a word or grammatical construction indicating a relationship of possession in a broad sense. This can include strict ownership, or a number of other types of relation to a greater or lesser degree analogous to it. Most European languages feature possessive forms associated with personal pronouns, like the English my, mine, your, yours, his and so on. There are two main ways in which these can be used (and a variety of terminologies for each): Together with a noun, as in my car, your sisters, his boss.
