personal pronoun
1
1.0
- noun
- /ˈpɜrsənl ˈproʊnaʊn/
- Specialized
:
pronombre personal
- The logo is identical to that for the personal pronoun "je" (I), but with a dot added to convey possession.
- use of personal pronouns
Examples
-
Incidentally, all personal pronouns in Oh! Pascal! are feminine.
Academic text (1996) -
People just didn't know how to deal with gender-frees because no one could devise workable gender-free personal pronouns.
Fiction book (2000) -
But you need to use some more personal pronouns.
Blog text (30) -
The typical distribution of the main personal pronouns in these texts has already been considered.
Academic text (2002) -
In this category, I have included the personal pronouns I and we when they refer to the actual researcher or research team.
Academic text (2002) -
Then Anna read the words out loud, bearing down harder on the personal pronouns each time.
Fiction book (1991) -
The main personal pronouns also betoken the broad "terms of reference" of a text.
Academic text (2002) -
And she uses a lot of personal pronouns, so you're not always quite sure who she's talking about.
-
In Baltimore, some teenagers already have: their candidate, yo, is a new gender-neutral third-person personal pronoun.
Academic text (2010) -
In English, the personal pronoun he is used to refer to a male individual.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a pronoun used to refer to a specific person or to mark grammatical person' is directly derivable from 'personal' (relating to persons) + 'pronoun' (a word that replaces a noun). This is a straightforward adjective + noun composition common across languages, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Personal pronoun may come from the image of a small word that points to a person, like a pointing finger. Pronoun is a word that 'stands for' a name and personal shows it is about a person. That's why personal pronoun means a word like 'I', 'you', or 'he' used instead of a name.