What are personal pronouns for and what is their function?

Personal pronouns are within spoken language, the first communication tool that we had and separated us in much of the animal kingdom. It allowed us as a society to reach new levels of development and civilization, which would have been practically impossible without them.

They help us to identify each other, between what we know as you and me. This not only serves to recognize each other as people, but also everything that belongs to us, be it material objects, members of the same clan or the rituals that each one performed during the different stages of human civilization.

What is the function of personal pronouns?

In any language it is impossible to hold a conversation, write sentences or understand a reading without the use of this very important grammar tool, it can be said that its main functions are the following:

Identify without nouns

Being able to identify a person without the need to use nouns, avoiding repeating the same during the same sentence, making communication more fluid, and also facilitating reading.

Identify belongings

They are of great help during communication by identifying personal and even intangible objects, as in the case of feelings. Another form of belonging that can be identified by this means is the assignment of tasks, who has to perform a certain activity.

Verbal identifiers

This means that they can also be used to refer to the actions already carried out of a third party where we are directly involved, instead of directly saying the name of the person repeatedly, we can ensure that we continue the thread of conversation and that we are understood using pronouns such as He she.

Distinguish grammatical person

They are used to distinguish or indicate the grammatical person during a sentence, despite the fact that they themselves lack explicit lexical content.

They are required in all languages

When trying to learn a new language it is very important to learn the pronouns in it, so it will be easier to understand the sentences, as well as to express ourselves appropriately. Taking into account that they are the bases of the way of speaking of any person, and being something that we use daily, it becomes much easier to learn a new language.

They can be used in comparisons

When we make implicit comparisons or when we want to emphasize a singularity of the subject, they are of great help, also in less frequent cases such as when we need to use the pronoun It, it does not refer to someone in particular but to a specific fact that is understood in the context of the conversation.

Types of personal pronouns

In general, they determine the grammatical person in different contexts, but they are classified according to the function that each one fulfills in the following way:

Independent pronouns

They stand out for being able to appear as a preposition, as a subject and, in other instances, they usually function as an attribute.

• Example: You are not on the guest list / She was ready before the scheduled time.

Unstressed personal pronouns

They can be part of pronominal verbs, but they are mainly used as a direct object or an indirect object.

• Example: I have a toothache / I’ll tell you the movie tomorrow

 Reflexives pronouns

Here the subject is represented by the reflexive pronoun and indicates that the action carried out has a direct effect on him, that is, on the subject.

• Example: I don’t deserve it / We get each other an excellent deal.

Enclitic pronouns

This could be considered an unstressed pronoun, which in this case is linked to a preceding verb to form a single word.

• Example: We must arrange it in the correct order / He must have loved her more than he thought.

Proclitic pronouns

It is always attached to an antecedent verb, being a type of unstressed pronoun, with the particularity that it is written separately.

• Example: He did it in record time / I saw you walking in the rain.

Demonstrative pronouns

They are used to indicate distance between objects or people involved in a sentence.

• Example: That is really far / This chair is closer than that one.

Possessive pronouns

They are easy to identify as they indicate some type of possession, that is, something belongs to us or to someone else.

• Example: My car is really fast in short distances / Your suitcase is really heavy.

Relative Pronouns

They can be considered an antecedent, generally taking the place of the sentence specifier. It is important to know them well, as they can easily be confused with relative adverbs.

A very used way is to avoid the constant repetition of the noun.

• Example: – Did you do the history essay? – No, the one I did was geography.

You can also substitute a Where for a Which or as follows:

• Example: The town where I was born is near a big city / The town where I was born is near a big city.

Another way to use it is with the Which or What to refer to a certain selection:

• Example: The student who did an interpretive dance won the dance contest / The student who did an interpretive dance won the dance contest.

Spanish personal pronouns

In the Spanish language to indicate the three grammatical persons there are some that by themselves do not have any meaning, but are closely linked to the context and these will vary depending on whether we are speaking in the singular or plural.

Singular personal pronouns

We use the singular to refer to only one and in this case the pronouns would be identified as follows:

• For the first person singular: Yo, me, mi, with me.
• Second person singular: You, you, you, with you, with you.
• Third person singular: he, it, it, it, yes, I get, she, it, it, it.

Plural personal pronouns

To refer to people in the plural in Spanish, the following forms are known:

• First person plural: We, us, us.
• Second person plural: You, you, you, you.
• Third person plural: They, they, los, las, les, se, si, conigo.

What are indefinite pronouns?

The best way to understand them is through examples, actually its definition itself refers to a type of pronoun that vaguely refers to things or people without being precise about quantities or genders.

• Example: Many attended class yesterday / Someone mentioned that it would be closed.

How to identify them?

As we have observed in the previous example, they refer to entities without specifying how many they are, nor what gender they belong to, although in the same way, like other similar ones, they substitute non-specific people and things.

It is worth noting that these have by themselves a concept, according to the Royal Academy they are also known as quantitative, that is, those undefined that refer to several objects generalizing, but we can still have an idea about whether it is one or more.

• Example: Several were able to survive / Few realized it in time.

Personal pronouns in education

From the first years of primary school and when the study of the native language begins, in our case Spanish, it is essential to start with these grammatical tools, they are the bases on which the language is built. In this way, children will be able to understand and at the same time acquire a suitable form of expression, being very important in communication with other people.

Although in this case we refer to the Spanish language, when learning a foreign language it is also necessary to learn them in that language, to start making sentences, because without them actions can not be expressed in an understandable way, be they wishes or requests.

Personal pronouns in English

Personal pronouns in English, one of the most important languages ​​in today’s life, are usually similar and used just as we do in Spanish, whether in singular or plural, and they are the following:

• For the first person singular: I.
• For the second person singular You.
• For the third person singular: he, she, it.

In English, it is introduced, which is a person that does not exist as such in Spanish but is similar to it, being used to refer to objects or animals.

• For the first person plural: we.
• The second person plural you.
• The third person plural: They.

conclusion

Personal pronouns are truly important in our day-to-day life, it allows us to maintain fluid, pleasant and understandable communication, it helps us to make ourselves understood even from a very young age, from simple things to the most complex.

We hope that this article has been of great help to you, we invite you to visit our website to learn more about a wide variety of very interesting topics.