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In Modern English, we is a plural, first-person pronoun. In Standard Modern English, we has six distinct shapes for five word forms: we: the nominative (subjective) form us and : the accusative (objective; also called the 'oblique'.) form our: the dependent genitive (possessive) form ours: the independent genitive (possessive) form ourselves: the reflexive form There is also a distinct determiner we as in we humans aren't perfect, which some people consider to be just an extended use of the pronoun. We has been part of English since Old English, having come from Proto-Germanic *wejes, from PIE *we-. Similarly, us was used in Old English as the accusative and dative plural of we, from PIE *nes-. The following table shows the old English first-person plural and dual pronouns: By late Middle English the dual form was lost and the dative and accusative had merged. The ours genitive can be seen as early as the 12th century. Ourselves replaced original construction we selfe, us selfum in the 15th century, so that, by century's end, the Middle English forms of we had solidified into those we use today. We is not generally seen as participating in the system of gender. In Old English, it certainly didn't. Only third-person pronouns had distinct masculine, feminine, and neutre gender forms. But by the 17th century, that old gender system, which also marked gender on common nouns and adjectives, had disappeared, leaving only pronoun marking. At the same time, a new relative pronoun system was developing that eventually split between personal relative who and impersonal relative which. This is seen as a new personal / non-personal (or impersonal) gender system. As a result, We can appear as a subject, object, determiner or predicative complement. The reflexive form also appears as an adjunct. Subject: We're there; us being there; our being there; we planned for ourselves to be there. Object: They saw us; She pointed them to us; We though about ourselves. Predicative complement: They have become us; We eventually felt we had become ourselves.

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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.

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).

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.

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