Types of Pronouns: Explanation and Examples

Types of Pronouns 

What is a pronoun? 

       Read the following sentence. 

Thomas is absent because he is ill.  

In the above sentence the word “he” replaces Thomas. 

Therefore ‘he’ is a pronoun. A pronoun is a word used instead of a noun. (Pro means ‘instead”) 

Examples of pronoun: I, he, she, it, they, them, we, somebody, etc. 

Types Of Pronouns 

There are EIGHT types of pronouns 

1. Personal pronouns 

2. Possessive pronouns 

3. Demonstrative pronouns 

4. Reflexive pronouns 

5. Distributive pronouns 

6. Interrogative pronouns 

7. Indefinite pronouns 

8. Relative pronouns 

1. Personal pronouns 

Personal pronouns are those that refer to persons, places, things or ideas. 

Personal pronouns provide us with the following information: 

• The person – Who is speaking? 
• The number – Is the pronoun plural or singular? 
• The gender – Is the pronoun feminine, masculine, or neuter? 

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2. Possessive pronouns 

A possessive pronoun is a pronoun that is used to express ownership or possession.  

E.g., Jane made payment of her bills in time every month. 

In the above sentence, the word ‘her’ is a possessive pronoun  

as the bill belongs to Jane. 

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3. Demonstrative pronoun

A demonstrative pronoun is a pronoun that is used to point to something specific within a sentence. These pronouns can indicate items in space or time, and they can be either singular or plural. 

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4. Reflexive pronouns 

Reflexive pronouns are words ending in -self or -selves that are used when the subject and the object of a sentence are the same  

E.g., She did her work herself. 

They can act as either objects or indirect objects.  

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5. Distributive pronoun is a pronoun which denotes people or things of group separately that’s why they always become singular and followed by singular verbs. 

This pronoun is used to indicate all the members of representative group. Some of the distributive pronouns are like each, either, neither, everyone, any, none, no one, etc. 

6. Interrogative pronouns 

An interrogative pronoun is a pronoun used to ask a question. For example, the word who is an interrogative pronoun in the sentence Who are you? Like most other pronouns, interrogative pronouns replace nouns in sentences. 

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7. Indefinite pronouns 

We use indefinite pronouns to refer to people or things without saying exactly who or what they are. We use pronouns ending in -body or -one for people, and pronouns ending in -thing for things: 

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We use indefinite pronouns to refer to people or things without saying exactly who or what they are. We use pronouns ending in -body or -one for people, and pronouns ending in –thing for things: 

8. Relative pronouns: The most common relative pronouns are who, whom, whose, which, that. The relative pronoun we use depends on what we are referring to and the type of relative clause. 

Examples: 

• The athlete who won the race was trained hard. 
• The shirt that I bought yesterday is already stained. 
• Sandwich, which we eat at least thrice a week, is one of my family’s favorite snacks.