Concept
He (pronoun)
Related concepts (11)
English personal pronouns
The English personal pronouns are a subset of English pronouns taking various forms according to number, person, case and grammatical gender. Modern English has very little inflection of nouns or adjectives, to the point where some authors describe it as an analytic language, but the Modern English system of personal pronouns has preserved some of the inflectional complexity of Old English and Middle English.
Gender neutrality in languages with gendered third-person pronouns
A third-person pronoun is a pronoun that refers to an entity other than the speaker or listener. Some languages with gender-specific pronouns have them as part of a grammatical gender system, a system of agreement where most or all nouns have a value for this grammatical category. A few languages with gender-specific pronouns, such as English, Afrikaans, Defaka, Khmu, Malayalam, Tamil, and Yazgulyam, lack grammatical gender; in such languages, gender usually adheres to "natural gender", which is often based on biological sex.
She (pronoun)
In Modern English, she is a singular, feminine, third-person pronoun. In Standard Modern English, she has four shapes representing five distinct word forms: she: the nominative (subjective) form her: the accusative (objective, also called the 'oblique'.) form; the dependent genitive (possessive) form hers: the independent genitive form herself: the reflexive form 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.
Gender in English
A system of grammatical gender, whereby every noun was treated as either masculine, feminine, or neuter, existed in Old English, but fell out of use during the Middle English period; therefore, Modern English largely does not have grammatical gender. Modern English lacks grammatical gender in the sense of all noun classes requiring masculine, feminine, or neuter inflection or agreement; however, it does retain features relating to natural gender with particular nouns and pronouns (such as woman, daughter, husband, uncle, he and she) to refer specifically to persons or animals of one or other sexes and neuter pronouns (such as it) for sexless objects.
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.
They
In Modern English, they is a third-person pronoun relating to a grammatical subject. In Standard Modern English, they has five distinct word forms: they: the nominative (subjective) form them: the accusative (objective, called the 'oblique'.) and a non-standard determinative form. their: the dependent genitive (possessive) form theirs: independent genitive form themselves: prototypical reflexive form themself: derivative reflexive form (nonstandard; now chiefly used instead of "himself or herself" as a reflexive epicenity for they in pronominal reference to a singular referent) Old English had a single third-person pronoun hē, which had both singular and plural forms, and they wasn't among them.
Subject pronoun
In linguistics, a subject pronoun is a personal pronoun that is used as the subject of a verb. Subject pronouns are usually in the nominative case for languages with a nominative–accusative alignment pattern. On the other hand, a language with an ergative-absolutive pattern usually has separate subject pronouns for transitive and intransitive verbs: an ergative case pronoun for transitive verbs and an absolutive case pronoun for intransitive verbs. In English, the commonly used subject pronouns are I, you, he, she, it, one, we, they, who and what.
Personal pronoun
Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as I), second person (as you), or third person (as he, she, it, they). Personal pronouns may also take different forms depending on number (usually singular or plural), grammatical or natural gender, case, and formality. The term "personal" is used here purely to signify the grammatical sense; personal pronouns are not limited to people and can also refer to animals and objects (as the English personal pronoun it usually does).
Singular they
Singular 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.
Pronoun
In 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.