PRON: pronoun
Definition
Pronouns are words that substitute for nouns or noun phrases, whose meaning is recoverable from the linguistic or extralinguistic context.
Pronouns under this definition function like nouns. Note that some
languages traditionally extend the term pronoun to words that
substitute for adjectives. Such words are not tagged PRON
under our universal scheme. They are tagged as determiners in
order to annotate the same thing the same way across languages.
It is not always crystal clear where pronouns end and determiners start.
Unlike in UD v1 it is no longer required that they are told apart solely on
the base of the context. The words can be pre-classified in the dictionary
as either PRON or DET, based on their typical syntactic distribution
(and morphology, when applicable).
Language-specific documentation should list all pronouns (it is a closed class)
and point out ambiguities, if any.
See also general principles on pronominal words for more tips on how to define pronouns. In particular:
- Non-possessive personal, reflexive or reciprocal pronouns are always tagged
PRON. - Possessives vary across languages. In some languages the above tests put them in the
DETcategory. In others, they are more like a normal personal pronoun in a specific case (often the genitive), or a personal pronoun with an adposition; they are taggedPRON.
Examples
- personal pronouns: I, you, he, she, it, we, they
- reflexive pronouns: myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, theirselves
- interrogative pronouns: who, what as in What do you think?
- relative pronouns: who, that, which as in a cat who eats fish; who, what as in I wonder what you think. (Unlike SCONJ relativizers, relative pronouns play a nominal role in the relative clause.)
- indefinite pronouns: somebody, something, anybody, anything
- total pronouns: everybody, everything
- negative pronouns: nobody, nothing
- possessive pronouns (which usually stand alone as a nominal): mine, yours, (his), hers, (its), ours, theirs
- attributive possessive pronouns (in some languages; others use DET for similar words): my, your
References
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]