Personal, Possessive and Reflexive Pronouns

Personal Pronouns

 In English grammar, a personal pronoun is a pronoun that refers to a particular person, group, or thing. Like all pronouns, personal pronouns can take the place of nouns and noun phrases.
These are the personal pronouns in English:

• First-person singular: I (subject); me (object)
• First-person plural: we (subject); us (object)
• Second-person singular and plural: you (subject and object)
• Third-person singular: he, she, it (subject); him, her, it (object)
• Third-person plural: they (subject); them (object)

 
Note that personal pronouns inflect for case to show whether they are serving as subjects of clauses or as objects of verbs or prepositions.
Also note that all the personal pronouns except you have distinct forms indicating number, either singular or plural. Only the third-person singular pronouns have distinct forms indicating gender: masculine (he, him), feminine (she, her), and neuter (it). A personal pronoun (such as they) that can refer to both masculine and feminine entities is called a generic pronoun.

Examples and Observations

• "Daddy Bailey invited me to spend the summer with him in southern California and I was jumpy with excitement."
  (Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Random House, 1969)
  
   
• "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
  (Oscar Wilde)
   
• "From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it."
  (Groucho Marx)
   
• "She had driven her father into town, stopping along the way as he pointed out sights, showed her where he used to play as a child, told her stories he hadn't thought about for years.
  
  "They went to the museum, where he showed Bee her ancestors . . .."
  (Jane Green, The Beach House. Viking Penguin, 2008)
   
• "Among naturalists, when a bird is seen well beyond its normal range, it is called an accidental."
  (E.L. Doctorow, The Waterworks. Macmillan, 1994)
   
• "I got the two carbons from a drawer and took them to her. As she did each one I took it and gave the signature a look."
  (Rex Stout, A Right to Die. Viking Press, 1964)
   
• They told me you had been to her,
  And mentioned me to him:
  She gave me a good character,
  But said I could not swim.
  
  He sent them word I had not gone
  (We know it to be true):
  If she should push the matter on,
  What would become of you?
  (from a letter read by the White Rabbit in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, 1865)
   
• "[M]ake the board of directors of British Telecom go out and personally track down every last red phone box that they sold off to be used as shower stalls and garden sheds in far-flung corners of the globe, make them put them all back, and then sack them--no, kill them. Then truly will London be glorious again."
  (Bill Bryson, Notes From a Small Island. Doubleday, 1995)
   
• Personal Pronouns and Antecedents
  "Personal pronouns are usually definite.
  
  "Being definite, 3rd person personal pronouns are normally only used when the person or thing they refer to has already been mentioned in the conversation or written text. The noun phrase in the previous conversation or written text which refers to the same person or thing as the personal pronoun is called the pronoun's 'antecedent.' In each of the examples below, the first [italicized] item is most naturally interpreted as the antecedent of the later personal pronoun, also [in italics].

- John came home late. He was drunk.
- Mary told John that she was leaving home.
- I saw John and Mary this morning. They seem to have made up."

(Jame R. Hurford, Grammar: A Student's Guide. Cambridge University Press, 1994)
 

• Backward and Forward Reference
  "Personal pronouns are most typically used for backward (anaphoric) reference:

The manager phoned me back. He was extremely apologetic.

Occasionally a personal pronoun may be used to refer forward (cataphorically). Such uses are common in openings to written stories:

She was walking along a tree-lined suburban road, unaware of what was about to befall her. Gillian Dawson had never been very aware of the people around her."

(Ronald Carter and Michael McCarthy, Cambridge Grammar of English. Cambridge University Press, 2006)
 

• Using Object Pronouns in Informal English
  "There are three situations where the object pronoun is sometimes used (especially in informal English) although it is the subject in terms of meaning:

(A) After than or as in comparisons:
E.g. They work longer hours than us.

(B) In replies without a verb.
E.g. 'I'm feeling very tired.' 'Me too.'

(C) After the verb be (as complement).
E.g. 'Is that the Prime Minister, in the middle of the photograph?' 'Yes, that's him.'

In all three cases, the subject pronoun (we, I, he) is uncommon and formal, although some people think it is 'correct.' The object pronoun is much more common.

"To be safe, for (A) and (B) above, use the subject pronoun + auxiliary; everyone is happy with this!

E.g. Her sister can sing better than she can.
'I am feeling very tired.' 'I am, too.'"

(Geoffrey Leech, Benita Cruickshank, and Roz Ivanic, An A-Z of English Grammar & Usage, 2nd ed. Pearson, 2001)
 

Possessive Pronouns

A possessive pronoun is a pronoun that can take the place of a noun phrase to show ownership (as in "This phone is mine").
The weak possessives (also called possessive determiners) function as determiners in front of nouns (as in "My phone is broken"). The weak possessives are my, your, his, her, its, our, and their.
In contrast, the strong (or absolute) possessive pronouns stand on their own: mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, and theirs. The strong possessive is a type of independent genitive.
A possessive pronoun never takes an apostrophe.

Examples and Observations

• "We were both work-study kids with University jobs. Hers was in the library; mine was in the Commons cafeteria."
  (Stephen King, Joyland. Titan Books, 2013) 

• "Go on, get inside the TARDIS. Oh, never given you a key? Keep that. Go on, that’s yours. Quite a big moment really!"
  (The Doctor to Donna in "The Poison Sky." Doctor Who, 2005)
   
• "Ours is an age of relentless testing, corrupted by cooked or deceitful results and widespread cheating scandals."
  (Joseph Featherstone, "Tested." The Nation, February 17, 2014)
   
• "'Mine is a long and sad tale!' said the Mouse, turning to Alice, and sighing.
  
  "'It is a long tail, certainly,' said Alice, looking down with wonder at the Mouse's tail; 'but why do you call it sad?'"
  (Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)
   
• "She underlines passages in my Bible because she can't find hers."
  (Ned in "The War of the Simpsons." The Simpsons, 1991)
   
• "Woman must have her freedom--the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she shall be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man's attitude may be, that problem is hers--and before it can be his, it is hers alone."
  (Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race, 1920)
   
• "It's really hard to be roommates with people if your suitcases are much better than theirs."
  (J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, 1951)
   
• "Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained."
  (William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790-1793)
   
• Possessive Pronouns vs. Possessive Determiners
  - "The possessive pronouns (mine, yours, his, etc.) are like possessive determiners, except that they constitute a whole noun phrase.
   
1. The house will be hers you see when they are properly divorced.
2. Writers have produced extraordinary work in conditions more oppressive than mine.

Possessive pronouns are typically used when the head noun can be found in the preceding context; thus in 1, hers means 'her house,' and in 2, mine means ' my conditions.' Here the possessive pronoun is parallel to the elliptic use of the genitive."
(D. Biber, S. Conrad, and G. Leech, Longman Student Grammar of Student and Written English. Pearson, 2002)


- "[The] construction with the possessive pronoun [e.g. a friend of mine] differs from the alternative of possessive determiner + noun (e.g. my friend) mainly in that it is more indefinite. The sentences in (30) below illustrates this point.

(30) a. You know John? A friend of his told me that the food served at that restaurant is awful.

(30) b. You know John? His friend told me that the food served at that restaurant is awful.

The construction with the possessive pronoun, in (30a), can be used if the speaker hasn't specified and doesn't need to specify the identity of the friend. In contrast, the construction with the possessive determiner, in (30b), implies that the speaker and listener both know what friend is intended."
(Ron Cowan, The Teacher's Grammar of English: A Course Book and Reference Guide. Cambridge University Press, 2008)
 

• Punctuation With Possessive Pronouns
  "The words hers, ours, theirs, and yours are sometimes termed 'absolute' or 'independent' possessives because they occur when no noun follows. No apostrophe appears in these words, which are often in the predicate [the house was ours] [the fault was theirs]. Sometimes, though, they can occur as subjects [hers was a gift that anyone would envy]."
  (Bryan A. Garner, Garner's Modern American Usage. Oxford University Press, 2009)
  
   
• The Lighter Side of Possessive Pronouns: An Irish Toast
  "Here's to you and yours and to mine and ours,
  And if mine and ours ever come across you and yours,
  I hope you and yours will do as much for mine and ours
  As mine and ours have done for you and yours!"

Reflexive Pronouns

 

In English grammar, a reflexive pronoun is a pronoun ending in -self or -selves that's used as an object to refer to a previously named noun or pronoun in a sentence. Also called simply a reflexive.
Reflexive pronouns usually follow verbs or prepositions.
Reflexive pronouns have the same forms as intensive pronouns: myself, ourselves, yourself, yourselves, himself, herself, itself, oneself, and themselves. Unlike intensive pronouns, reflexive pronouns are essential to the meaning of a sentence. 

Examples and Observations

• "I do the Sunday chores. I stoke the stove. I listen for the runaway toilet. I true up the restless rug. I save the whale. I wind the clock. I talk to myself."
  (E.B. White, Introduction to One Man's Meat. Harper & Row, 1983)
   
• "Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."
  (Mark Twain)
   

• "Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self."(Cyril Connolly)

 

• "Take everything you like seriously, except yourselves."
  (Rudyard Kipling)
  
  
• "A woman needs to support herself before she asks anyone else to support her."
  (Maya Angelou, Mom & Me & Mom. Random House, 2013)
   
• "A kleptomaniac is a person who helps himself because he can't help himself."
  (Henry Morgan)
  
   
• "The furnace, whirring and stinking to itself, reminded him pleasantly that snow on the roof reduced the fuel bill."
  (John Updike, "Married Life." The Early Stories: 1953-1975. Random House, 2003)
  
   
• "At night she and her daughter lit the house with candles and kerosene lamps; they warmed themselves and cooked with wood and coal, pumped kitchen water into a dry sink through a pipeline from a well and lived pretty much as though progress was a word that mean walking a little farther on down the road."
  (Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon. Alfred Knopf, 1977)
   
• Hypercorrectness and Reflexive Pronouns
  - "The tendency toward hypercorrectness occurs with the reflexives as well as with the personal pronouns. It's quite common to hear the reflexive where the standard rule calls for me, the straight objective case:
1. * Tony cooked dinner for Carmen and myself.
2. * The boss promised Pam and myself a year-end bonus.

Note that the antecedent of myself does not appear in either sentence. Another fairly common nonstandard usage occurs when speakers use myself in place of I as part of a compound subject:

* Ted and myself decided to go out and celebrate.

These nonstandard ways of using the reflexive are probably related to emphasis as well as to hypercorrection. Somehow the two-syllable myself sounds more emphatic than either me or I."
(Martha Kolln, Rhetorical Grammar: Grammatical Choices, Rhetorical Effects, 3rd ed. Allyn and Bacon, 1999)


- "Phrases such as 'he gave it to myself' or 'I saw yourself there' are sheer abominations."
(Simon Heffer, Strictly English. Random House, 2011)
 

• The Lighter Side of Reflexive Pronouns
  "Let me tell you a little about myself. It's a reflexive pronoun that means 'me.'"
  (Ally Houston, Edinburgh Festival 2015)

Sources :

http://grammar.about.com/od/pq/g/perspronounterm.htm

http://grammar.about.com/od/pq/g/posspronterm.htm

http://grammar.about.com/od/rs/g/refpronounterm.htm