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This page pertains to UD version 2.

PRON: pronoun

PRON is used for English pronouns, such as we, her, it, who, and that when used as a relative pronoun.

The English PRON corresponds to the PTB PRP, PRP$, WP, WP$, EX, and certain things that are tagged DT or WDT (question and Wh pronouns, such as who, this, and that), when they comprise a nominal by themselves rather than functioning as the determiner of a nominal head (usually a noun).

Personal pronouns

Lemmas that differ from the inflected form are shown in brackets. (The accusative is lemmatized to match the nominative, and the independent possessive is lemmatized to match the dependent possessive.)

Variant forms are italicized, with additional features described below the table.

PronType=Prs* Nominative
Case=Nom
Accusative
Case=Acc
Dependent
Possessive
Case=Gen, Poss=Yes
Independent
Possessive
Poss=Yes
Reflexive
Case=Acc, Reflex=Yes
Person=1, Number=Sing I me [I] my mine [my] myself
Person=1, Number=Plur we us [we], ’s [we] our ours [our] ourselves
Person=2 you, u [you], ya you, u [you], ya your, ur [your], yo yours [your]  
Person=2, Number=Sing thou thee [thou] thy thine [thy] yourself, thyself
Person=2, Number=Plur ye y’all     yourselves
Person=3, Number=Sing, Gender=Masc he him [he] his his himself
Person=3, Number=Sing, Gender=Fem she her [she] her hers [her] herself
Person=3, Number=Sing, Gender=Neut it it its its itself
Person=3, Number=Sing one one     oneself
Person=3, Number=Plur they them [they], ’em their theirs [their] themselves
XPOS (PTB) PRP PRP PRP$ PRP PRP

* Some reflexives (I myself am…) are PronType=Emp.

In the table, one is the use to refer to a generic individual (PRP in PTB); other uses are mentioned below. Genericity is not made explicit in the features.

Variant forms associated with features (in addition to the features associated with the standard counterpart):

The contracted form of us in let’s is treated like other standard contractions (e.g. n’t), receiving the same lemma (we) and features as its noncontracted counterpart.

Relative/interrogative (WH) pronouns

These are either PronType=Int (interrogative) or PronType=Rel (relative). PronType is the only feature except where shown below.

WH Plain -ever Possessive
wh.anim who, whom (WP) whoever, whosoever, whomever (WP) whose (WP$)
wh.inanim what, wtf (WP) whatever (WP) whose (WP$)
wh.det which (WDT) whichever (WDT)  

Relative that is also considered a PRON in UD (XPOS WDT).

The table shows only PRON forms. Note that what, whatever, and which are tagged DET when functioning as det (WDT).

The variant wtf receives Style=Expr. The variant whosoever receives Style=Form.

TODO: “no/any N whatsoever”: whatsoever is currently ADV in EWT but maybe PRON is better. Unlike whosoever, this use of whatsoever is not formal; maybe Style=Expr or even PronType=Emp.

TODO: whatever is sometimes DET+WDT even when not det

TODO: tag whom(ever) for case; lemmatize whom as who and whomever as whoever

TODO: add Poss=Yes and possibly Case=Gen for whose. Do we want to distinguish dependent (Case=Gen) and independent uses? Unlike what, whatever, which, all whose instances are currently tagged PRON.

TODO: exclamative what is PRON+WDT?

Indefinite pronouns

These are NN in PTB but PRON in UD. A feature indicating the type of pronoun is provided as shown in the table below. These also receive the feature Number=Sing.

INDEFINITE   one body thing
PronType=Tot   everyone everybody everything
PronType=Ind (any)   anyone anybody anything
PronType=Ind (some)   someone somebody something
PronType=Neg none, naught no one nobody nothing

Note that the Ind (indefinite) value of the PronType feature is narrower in UD than the general use of the term “indefinite pronoun”: Ind specifically refers to the some- and any- varieties. These two varieties are not currently distinguished with features.

For no one, written as two words, no is tagged as DET, and one is tagged as PRON with PronType=Neg. (It can also be spelled as one hyphenated word.)

N.B. when, wherever, somewhere, etc. are tagged as ADV, not PRON.

Demonstrative pronouns

Always DT in PTB, but UD uses PRON when these head a nominal.

PronType=Dem Number=Sing Number=Plur
prox this these [this]
dist that those [that]

The proximal/distal distinction is not encoded in features, but each corresponds to a unique lemma.

Note that ADVs here and there also receive PronType=Dem.

Expletive there

Expletive there (EX) receives no features.

By contrast, it is considered a personal pronoun (PRP) even when functioning as expl.

Reciprocal pronouns

Reciprocal pronouns each other and one another receive the feature PronType=Rcp and are analyzed structurally with fixed.

Examples with tags:

They saw each/DET other/ADJ
fixed(each, other)
obj(saw, each)
They saw one/PRON another/DET
fixed(one, another)
obj(saw, one)

Uses of one

According to the PTB tagging guidelines, one should be

These correspond to UPOS tags NUM, PRON, and NOUN, respectively. However, we depart from PTB in treating one as a pronoun in no one and one another, as described above.


PRON in other languages: [bej] [bg] [bm] [cs] [cy] [da] [de] [el] [en] [es] [ess] [et] [fi] [fro] [fr] [ga] [grc] [hu] [hy] [it] [ja] [ka] [kk] [kpv] [ky] [myv] [nci] [no] [pcm] [pt] [qpm] [ru] [sla] [sl] [sv] [tr] [tt] [uk] [u] [urj] [xcl] [yue] [zh]