This article is all about pronouns with examples. We’re going to focus on the most important types of pronouns. We will start by talking about personal pronouns then we’ll move onto reflexive pronouns and then we’ll look at indefinite pronouns and finally we’ll turn to interrogative pronouns.

what is a pronoun?

A pronoun is a word that replaces a noun in a sentence. Replaces means it takes the place of a noun.

For example consider these sentences Corey works with Paige. Cory likes working with Paige. Corey and Paige do many projects together. Of course that sounds very repetitive because we keep saying Corey and Paige. You can say he likes working with her, They do many projects together. That sounds much more natural because we’re using the pronouns he, her and they in the place of nouns.

Personal Pronouns and types with examples

Pronouns that talk about people are called personal pronouns because they refer to persons. See above example he, her and they are considered personal pronoun.

Personal pronouns come in three types
1. subject pronouns.
2. object pronouns.
3. possessive pronouns.

Subject pronoun with examples

A subject pronoun is used in the place of a subject in a sentence. For example in this sentence, I saw Lily yesterday. The pronoun is I and it’s a subject pronoun because I do the action and you can replace that with any other subject pronoun. You can say “we saw Lilly yesterday or he saw Lilly yesterday etc”.

Object pronouns

An object pronoun is used in the object position in a sentence. For example Lily saw them yesterday. Here them is an object pronoun and you could use any other object pronoun in that place.

Possessive pronouns

Possessive pronouns show possession – that means they show that you have something. For example if I said “This is our house” the pronoun our shows that this house belongs to me and my family. I could also say this house is ours That means the same thing.

Reflexive pronouns with examples

Reflexive pronouns are pronouns like myself yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves. and these are called reflexive because they reflect back to the subject of the sentence.

For example this morning I stood in front of a mirror What did I see in the mirror? I saw myself. In that sentence notice that the subject and the object are both the same – I or me. And to show that relationship we use the ending self – I saw myself. Let me give you another example. I have a friend who likes to think very deeply about things and when he thinks he likes to get up and walk around the room and talk, except he doesn’t talk to other people

He talks to himself. Again the subject and the object are the same person

Now the pronouns myself yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves are the only reflexive pronouns in English, there are no other reflexive pronouns so it’s a good idea for you to memorize these so that you don’t use any wrong forms. Remember to only use myself or any reflexive form when the subject and the object are the same.

Indefinite pronouns with examples

OK so let’s now move on and talk about indefinite pronouns. What do you understand by the word indefinite? It means something like not definite or not sure and these are words like anybody, everybody, somebody, nobody, each, anyone, everyone, someone, no one, either, something, anything, everything, nothing, neither and these are indefinite because they don’t refer to a particular person or a particular thing. Now the important point here is that all the indefinite pronouns that you see on the screen are singular pronouns – that means with all of them you have to use singular verbs in the present tense.

For example, “You look worried. Is something wrong?” “There’s a party at our place on Saturday night and everybody is welcome”. The pronoun everybody is singular and you might be asking here wait how is that possible because everybody means all the people. True but everybody is kind of like saying every single body or every single person so because we’re referring to every single person the pronoun is singular and you have to use a singular verb.

Interrogative pronouns with example

OK let’s now move on and talk about our final type of pronoun and that is interrogative pronouns. Now even though this name might sound little fancy interrogative pronouns are just the question words who, whom, whose, what and which.

For example, Who visited Mabel in the hospital last week?
Whom did Helen visit in the hospital last week?

Also read:
What are Verbs with Examples
8 Parts of Speech with Examples