PRONOUNS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE

1. What are determiners?

Determiners are function words which are used to identify the reference of a noun. Broadly, three groups may be identified:

- Pre-determiners: "all", "both", "half", and multipliers like " double, once, twice"

- Central determiners: articles, denominative determiners (this, that, these, those), possessive determiners (his, her...)

- Post determiners with 2 sub-groups:

+ Ordinal numeral and semi-determiners ("same", "other", "latter", "last", "next")

+ Cardinal numeral and quantifying determiners ("some", "a lot of", "enough").

2. Give the description of pronoun in English?

The pronoun is a part of speech including words with a very general or relative meaning. It is used as substitution of a noun or an adjective.

Pronoun indicates living beings, things, and their quality without naming them. It is always clear from the context or the situation what person is denoted by pronoun "I, he, she", for example, or what thing, quality is denoted by the pronoun "it" or "this".

There are several features that pronouns have in common which distinguish them from nouns

- They do not admit determiners.

- They often have objective case, personal distinction and overt gender contrast.

- Their singular and plural form are not morphologically related.

3. What is the difference between the possessive adjective and possessive pronoun?

- Possessive adjectives must go with a noun or noun phrase.

Eg: Their house is bigger than mine

- Possessive pronouns never go with a noun and are often stressed in speech. They refer to equally to things, people, singular and plural.

Eg: That bicycle is mine.

4. What is the difference between determiner and pronoun?

A determiner is a word which is always followed by a noun and limits the meaning of the noun in some ways whereas a pronoun is a word which can be used in place of the noun phrase.

Eg: She needs some (deter) drink and I want some (pro) too.

Many people support his (deter) plan but I hate his (pro).

5. State the use of reciprocal pronoun?

Reciprocal pronoun "each other", "one another" are used to indicate the relationship of neutrality: people do the same thing, feel the same way or have the same relationship.

Traditionally, "each other" refers to 2 people or things, "one another" refers to more than two.

Eg: After their quarrel, we tried to avoid seeing each other.

All parties agree to support one another in case of emergency.

6. State the use of reflexive pronoun?

Reflexive pronouns (also call shelf pronouns) are used to express an action that returns to its doer or express emphasis. They have grammatical category of person, gender, number.

Reflexive pronouns are used as noun, pronoun in one of the following functions:

- As predicative showing feelings, emotions and states.

Eg: I'm not quite myself today.

- As object (direct, indirect) indicating that the action returns to the doer, that is when the subject and object are the same person.

Eg: I hate myself for making such stupid mistake.

- As adverbial modifier of manner emphasizing that a person does st by himself without anybody's help.

Eg: I did it by myself.

- In apposition to a noun or pronoun having an emphatic meaning.

Eg: The director himself presented her a diploma.