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Determiners and Pronouns in English

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 Determiners and Pronouns in English

Mohammed Jasim Betti

Department of English , College of Education for Humanities,

University of Thi-Qar

1. Determiners

1.1 Definition

A determiner also called determinative is a word, phrase, or affix that

occurs together with a noun or noun phrase and serves to express the
reference of that noun or noun phrase in the context ("Determiners",
2021). That is, a determiner may indicate whether the noun is referring to
a definite or indefinite element of a class, to a closer or more distant
element, to an element belonging to a specified person or thing, to a
particular number or quantity, etc. Common kinds of determiners include
definite and indefinite articles (like the English the and a or an),
demonstratives (this and that), possessive determiners (my and their),
cardinal numerals, quantifiers (many, both, all and no), distributive
determiners (each, any), and interrogative determiners (which).

Most determiners have been traditionally classed along with either

adjectives or pronouns, and this still occurs in classical grammars: for
example, demonstrative and possessive determiners are sometimes
described as demonstrative adjectives and possessive adjectives or as
(adjectival) demonstrative pronouns and (adjectival) possessive pronouns
respectively. These classical interpretations of determiners map to some
of the linguistic properties related to determiners in modern syntax
theories, such as deictic information, definiteness and genitive case.
However, modern theorists of grammar prefer to distinguish determiners
as a separate word class from adjectives, which are simple modifiers of
nouns, expressing attributes of the thing referred to (Progovac, 1998: 166;
Al-Haydary, and Betti, 2020a: 15-19; and Betti, (2022a: 2). According to
the OED (Second Edition), the word determiner was first used in its
grammatical sense by Bloomfield (1933).

This distinction applies particularly in languages like English that use

definite and indefinite articles, frequently as a necessary component of
noun phrases – the determiners may then be taken to be a class of words
that includes the articles as well as other words that function in the place
of articles. (The composition of this class may depend on the particular
language's rules of syntax; for example, in English the possessives my,
your etc. are used without articles and so can be regarded as determiners,
whereas their Italian equivalents mio etc. are used together with articles
and so may be better classed as adjectives (Progovac, 1998: 166; Betti,
2022b: 3; and Algburi, and Igaab, 2021: 36). Not all languages can be
said to have a lexically distinct class of determiners.

In some languages, the role of certain determiners can be played by

affixes (prefixes or suffixes) attached to a noun or by other types of
inflection. For example, definite articles are represented by suffixes in
Romanian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Swedish. (For example, in
Swedish, bok ("book"), when definite, becomes boken ("the book"),
while the Romanian caiet ("notebook") similarly becomes caietul ("the
notebook").) Some languages, such as Finnish, have possessive affixes,
which play the role of possessive determiners like my and his. Some
theoreticians unify determiners and pronouns into a single class
(Progovac, 1998: 166; Betti, 1990: 81; and Al-Seady, 1998a: 8-5).
 Universal grammar is the theory that all humans are born equipped
with grammar, and all languages share certain properties. There are
arguments that determiners are not a part of universal grammar and are
instead part of an emergent syntactic category. This has been shown
through the studies of some languages' histories, (Van de Velde, 2010:
263–70; Al-Haydary, and Betti, 2020b: 25-6; n d Betti, 2021cc: 6).

1.2 Types

Determiners may be subcategorized as predeterminers, central

determiners and postdeterminers, based on the order in which they can
occur. For example, all my many very young children" uses one of each.
"My all many very young children" is not grammatically correct because
a central determiner cannot precede a predeterminer (Progovac, 1998:
166; Betti, 1993: 11; and Al-Seady, 1998b: 61-62).

A. Articles

Articles are words used with a noun (as a standalone word or a prefix or
suffix) to specify the grammatical definiteness of a noun, and, in some
languages, to volume or numerical scope (Runner, et al. 2005; Betti,
1996: 79; and Al-Seady, 2002a: 121).

B. Definite article

The definite article in the English language is the word the. It denotes
people, places, and things that have already been mentioned, implied, or
presumed to be known by the listener (Progovac, 1998: 166; Betti, 1995:
5-9; and Al-Seady, 1998c: 80-2).
C. Indefinite article

The indefinite article takes the forms of a and an in English. It is mostly

synonymous with one, but the word one is usually used when
emphasizing singularity (Matthews, 2014; Betti, 1998: 17; and Al-Seady,
2002b: 19).

D. Demonstratives

Demonstratives are words, such as this and that, used to indicate which
entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others.
They are usually deictic, which means their meaning changes with
context (Runner, et al. 2005; Betti, 2002a: 72; and Betti, 2002b: 82).

They can indicate how close the things being referenced are to the
speaker, listener, or other group of people. In English Demonstratives
express proximity of things with respect to the speaker (Progovac, 1998:
166; Al-Seady, and Al-Sehlani, 2002: 42-3; and Al-Sheikh, 2006a: 61).

E. Proximal demonstratives

In English, the words this and these are the proximal demonstratives.
They express that the particular things being mentioned are very close to
the speaker (Progovac, 1998: 166; Betti, 2021ee: 7; and Al-Sheikh,
2006b: 19-21).

F. Distal demonstratives

The distal demonstratives in the English language are that and those.
They express that there is some distance between the things being
referenced and the speaker.
G. Possessive determiner

Possessive determiners such as my and their modify a noun by attributing

possession (or other sense of belonging) to someone or something, and
usually reflect the noun's genitive case. They are also known as
possessive adjectives (Runner, et al. 2005; Betti, 2002c: 67; and Betti,
and Al-Jubouri, 2015c: 86).

H. Quantifiers

Quantifiers indicate quantity (Matthews, 2014; Betti, Igaab, & Al-Ghizzi,

2018: 272; and Betti, 2020a: 11). Some examples of quantifiers include:
all, some, many, few, and no. Quantifiers are also dependent of a noun.
Quantifiers only indicate a vague quantity of objects, not a specific
number, such as twelve, dozen, first, single, or once, which would be
considered numerals (Matthews, 2014; Betti, 2007: 429; and Betti, and
Al-Jubouri, 2009: 365).

I. Distributive determiners

Distributive determiners, also called distributive adjectives, consider

members of a group separately, rather than collectively. Words such as
each, any, either, and neither are examples of distributive determiners.
This type of determiner also depends on a noun. These determiners are
not to be confused with distributive pronouns, which can operate without
a noun (Runner, et al. 2005; (Betti, 2002d: 71; and Betti, and Igaab
(2015: 201-3).

Each went his own way. (Each is used as a pronoun, without an

accompanying noun.)
Each man went his own way. (Each is used as a determiner,
accompanying the noun man.) (Nemoto, 2005: 383; Betti, 2003: 47; and
(Betti, and Mugeer, 2016: 36).

J. Interrogative determiners

Interrogatives are used to ask a question, such as which, what, and whose
(personal possessive determiner). These determiners also depend on a
noun.

K. As a functional head

Some modern grammatical approaches regard determiners as heads of

their own phrases. In such approaches, noun phrases are generally
dominated by determiner phrases whose heads are often null. Noun
phrases that contain only a noun and do not have a determiner present are
known as bare noun phrases (Nemoto, 2005: 383; Betti, 2013: 64; and
Betti, and Hashim, 2018: 279).

2. Pronouns

2.1 Definition

In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a word or a group of words

that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have
traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some
modern theorists would not consider them to form a single class, in view
of the variety of functions they perform cross-linguistically (Matthews,
2014; Betti, 2015a: 19; and Betti, and Igaab, 2018: 37).

An example of a pronoun is "you", which is both plural and singular.

Subtypes include personal and possessive pronouns, reflexive and
reciprocal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, relative and interrogative
pronouns, and indefinite pronouns (Börjars, and Burridge, 2010: 50–57;
Betti, and Ulaiwi, 2018: 95; and Betti, 2006: 149-50).

The use of pronouns often involves anaphora, where the meaning of

the pronoun is dependent on an antecedent. For example, in the sentence
That poor man looks as if he needs a new coat, the meaning of the
pronoun he is dependent on its antecedent, that poor man (Bhat, 2007: 1;
Dehham, , Betti, and Hussein, 2021: 3; and Betti, 2021h: 5)

The adjective associated with "pronoun" is "pronominal".[A] A

pronominal is also a word or phrase that acts as a pronoun. For example,
in That's not the one I wanted, the phrase the one (containing the prop-
word one) is a pronominal (Loos, et al. 2015; Betti, 2015b: 41; and Betti,
and AlFartoosy, 2019: 98-102).

2.2 Pronoun versus pro-form

Pronoun is a category of words. A pro-form is a type of function word

or expression that stands in for (expresses the same content as) another
word, phrase, clause or sentence where the meaning is recoverable from
the context (Crystal, 1985; Betti, 2020d: 49; and Betti, and Hasan, 2020:
46-8). In English, pronouns mostly function as pro-forms, but there are
pronouns that are not pro-forms and pro-forms that are not pronouns
(Huddleston and Pullum, 2002; Betti, and Yaseen, 2020: 52; and Betti,
2021a: 6), see the following examples:
1. It is a good idea.
2. I know the people who work here.
3. Who works there?
4. It is raining.
5. I asked her to help, and she did so right away.
6. James and Petra helped, but the others didn't.

Examples [1 & 2] are pronouns and pro-forms. In [1], the pronoun it

"stands in" for whatever was mentioned and is a good idea. In [2], the
relative pronoun who stands in for "the people".

Examples [3 & 4] are pronouns but not pro-forms. In [3], the

interrogative pronoun who doesn't stand in for anything. Similarly, in [4],
it is a dummy pronoun, one that doesn't stand in for anything. No other
word can function there with the same meaning; we don't say "the sky is
raining" or "the weather is raining" (Huddleston and Pullum, 2002; Betti,
2020c: 41; and Betti, and Igaab, 2019: 231).

Finally, in [5 & 6], there are pro-forms that are not pronouns. In [5], did
so is a verb phrase that stands in for "helped", inflected from to help
stated earlier in the sentence. Similarly, in [6], others is a common noun,
not a pronoun, but the others probably stands in for the names of other
people involved (e.g., Sho, Alana, and Ali), all proper nouns (Loos, et al.
2015; Betti, and Mahdi, 2020: 71; and Betti, 2002e: 62).

2.3 Grammar

Pronouns (antōnymía) are listed as one of eight parts of speech in The

Art of Grammar, mentioned by Dionysius Thrax. The pronoun is
described there as "a part of speech substitutable for a noun and marked
for a person (Progovac, 1998: 166; (Betti, 2020b: 49; and Betti, and
Ghadhab, 2020: 39).

" Pronouns continued to be regarded as a part of speech in Latin

grammar (the Latin term being pronomen, from which the English name
– through Middle French – ultimately derives), and thus in the European
tradition generally (Loos, et al. 2015; Betti, 2021c: 1; and Betti, and
Mahdi, 2021: 45).

Because of the many different syntactic roles that they play, pronouns
are less likely to be a single word class in more modern approaches to
grammar (Plotkin, Vulf 82–83; Betti, 2021e: 5; and Betti, and Khalaf ,
2021: 16).

2.4 Linguistics

Linguists in particular have trouble classifying pronouns in a single

category, and some do not agree that pronouns substitute nouns or noun
categories. Certain types of pronouns are often identical or similar in
form to determiners with related meaning. This leads some linguists, such
as Paul Postal, to regard pronouns as determiners that have had their
following noun or noun phrase deleted (Postal, 1966: 177–206; Betti,
2021g: 7; and Igaab, 2010b: 159). (Such patterning can even be claimed
for certain personal pronouns; for example, we and you might be
analyzed as determiners in phrases like we Brits and you tennis players.)

Other linguists have taken a similar view, uniting pronouns and

determiners into a single class, sometimes called "determiner-pronoun",
or regarding determiners as a subclass of pronouns or vice versa (Crystal,
1985; Hashim, and Betti, 2020: 301; and Betti, 2021i: 7). The distinction
may be considered to be one of subcategorization or valency, rather like
the distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs – determiners
take a noun phrase complement like transitive verbs do, while pronouns
do not (Morley, 2004: 68–73; Betti, 2021f: 3; and Betti, and Hashim,
2021: 47).
 This is consistent with the determiner phrase viewpoint, whereby a
determiner, rather than the noun that follows it, is taken to be the head of
the phrase. Cross-linguistically, it seems as though pronouns share 3
distinct categories: point of view, person, and number. The breadth of
each subcategory however tends to differ among languages (Simon, and
Wiese, 2002: 190; Betti, 2021d: 5; and Igaab, 2010a: 26).

2.5 Binding theory and antecedents

The use of pronouns often involves anaphora, where the meaning of

the pronoun is dependent on another referential element. The referent of
the pronoun is often the same as that of a preceding (or sometimes
following) noun phrase, called the antecedent of the pronoun. The
grammatical behavior of certain types of pronouns, and in particular their
possible relationship with their antecedents, has been the focus of studies
in binding, notably in the Chomskyan government and binding theory. In
this binding context, reflexive and reciprocal pronouns in English (such
as himself and each other) are referred to as anaphors (in a specialized
restricted sense) rather than as pronominal elements. Under binding
theory, specific principles apply to different sets of pronouns (Loos, et al.
2015; Igaab, and Al-Manhalawey, 2010: 46; and Betti, 2021n: 6).

Example reflexive structure.

Since "himself" is immediately dominated by "John", Principle A is

satisfied.

In English, reflexive and reciprocal pronouns must adhere to Principle

A: an anaphor (reflexive or reciprocal, such as "each other") must be
bound in its governing category (roughly, the clause). Therefore, in
syntactic structure it must be lower in structure (it must have an
antecedent) and have a direct relationship with its referent. This is called
a C-command relationship (Crystal, 1985; Betti, 2021j: 18; and Igaab,
2015a: 19).

For instance, we see that John cut himself is grammatical, but Himself
cut John is not, despite having identical arguments, since himself, the
reflexive, must be lower in structure to John, its referent. Additionally,
we see examples like John said that Mary cut himself are not grammatical
because there is an intermediary noun, Mary, that disallows the two
referents from having a direct relationship (Huddleston and Pullum, 2002;
(Betti, 2021p: 12; and Igaab, and Al-Bdeary, 2016: 45).

Example pronoun structure. Since "him" is immediately dominated by

"John", Principle B is violated.

On the other hand, personal pronouns (such as him or them) must

adhere to Principle B: a pronoun must be free (i.e., not bound) within its
governing category (roughly, the clause). This means that although the
pronouns can have a referent, they cannot have a direct relationship with
the referent where the referent selects the pronoun. For instance, John
said Mary cut him is grammatical because the two co-referents, John and
him are separated structurally by Mary. This is why a sentence like John
cut him where him refers to John is ungrammatical (Huddleston and
Pullum, 2002; Igaab, 2015b: 25; and Betti, 2021o: 8).

2.6 Binding cross-linguistically

The type of binding that applies to subsets of pronouns varies cross-

linguistically. For instance, in German linguistics, pronouns can be split
into two distinct categories — personal pronouns and d-pronouns
(Crystal, 1985; Igaab, and Abdulhasan, 2018: 92; and Betti, 2021ff: 3).
Although personal pronouns act identically to English personal pronouns
(i.e. follow Principle B), d-pronouns follow yet another principle,
Principle C, and function similarly to nouns in that they cannot have a
direct relationship to an antecedent (Simon, and Wiese, 2002: 190; Igaab,
and Altai, 2018: 291; and Betti, 2021t: 4).

2.7 Antecedents

The following sentences give examples of particular types of pronouns

used with antecedents:

A. Third-person personal pronouns:

o That poor man looks as if he needs a new coat. (the noun

phrase that poor man is the antecedent of he)
o Julia arrived yesterday. I met her at the station. (Julia is the
antecedent of her)
o When they saw us, the lions began roaring (the lions is the
antecedent of they; as it comes after the pronoun it may be
called a postcedent)

B. Other personal pronouns in some circumstances:

o Terry and I were hoping no one would find us. (Terry and I
is the antecedent of us)
o You and Alice can come if you like. (you and Alice is the
antecedent of the second – plural – you)

C. Reflexive and reciprocal pronouns:

o Jack hurt himself. (Jack is the antecedent of himself)

 o We were teasing each other. (we is the antecedent of each
other)

D. Relative pronouns:

The woman who looked at you is my sister. (the woman is the antecedent
of who) (Plotkin, 82–83; Betti, 2021q: 6; and Igaab, and Kareem (2018:
99).

Some other types, such as indefinite pronouns, are usually used

without antecedents. Relative pronouns are used without antecedents in
free relative clauses. Even third-person personal pronouns are sometimes
used without antecedents ("unprecursed") – this applies to special uses
such as dummy pronouns and generic they, as well as cases where the
referent is implied by the context (Crystal, 1985; Betti, 2021dd: 12; and
(Igaab, and Tarrad, 2019: 63).

E. English pronouns

English personal pronouns have a number of different syntactic contexts

(Subject, Object, Possessive, Reflexive) and many features (Huddleston
and Pullum, 2002; Igaab, 2010: 87; and Betti, 2021u: 7).

 person (1st, 2nd, 3rd);

 number (singular, plural);
 gender (masculine, feminine, neuter or inanimate, epicene)

Personal pronouns in standard Modern English

Number Independent
Person Subject Object Dependent Reflexive
possessive possessive
& Gender
 (determiner)

Singular I me my mine myself

First
Plural we us our ours ourselves

Singular yourself
Second you your yours
Plural yourselves

Masculine he him his himself

Feminine she her hers herself

Neuter/
Third it its itself
Inanimate
Epicene themself
they them their theirs
Plural themselves

English also has other pronoun types, including demonstrative,

relative, indefinite, and interrogative pronouns (Postal, 1966: 177–8;
Igaab, 2015: 75; and Betti, 2021v: 3).

Demonstrative Relative Indefinite Interrogative

who / whom / who / whom /

this one / one's / oneself
whose whose

something / anything /
these what what
nothing (things)
 someone / anyone / no
that which which
one (people)

somebody / anybody /
those that
nobody (people)

former / latter

F. Personal and possessive Pronouns

a. Personal
English personal pronouns[2]: 52

Case
Person Number
Subject Object

Singular I me
First
Plural we us

Singular
Second you
Plural

he him

she her
Third Singular
it

they them
 Plural/Epicene they them

Personal pronouns may be classified by person, number, gender and

case. English has three persons (first, second and third) and two numbers
(singular and plural); in the third person singular there are also distinct
pronoun forms for male, female and neuter gender. Principal forms are
shown in the adjacent table (Morley, 2004: 68–73; and Betti, 2021w: 13).

English personal pronouns have two cases, subject and object. Subject
pronouns are used in subject position (I like to eat chips, but she does
not). Object pronouns are used for the object of a verb or preposition
(John likes me but not her) (Plotkin, 82–83; Salman, and Betti, 2020:
228; and Betti, 2021y: 5).

Other distinct forms found in some languages include:

Second person informal and formal pronouns (the T–V distinction), like
tu and vous in French. Formal second person pronouns can also signify
plurality in many languages. There is no such distinction in standard
modern English, though Elizabethan English marked the distinction with
thou (singular informal) and you (plural or singular formal). Some
dialects of English have developed informal plural second person
pronouns, for instance, y'all (Southern American English) and you guys
(American English) (Huddleston and Pullum, 2002; and Betti, 2021x: 2).

 Inclusive and exclusive first person plural pronouns, which indicate

whether or not the audience is included, that is, whether we means
"you and I" or "they and I". There is no such distinction in English.
 Intensive (emphatic) pronouns, which re-emphasize a noun or
pronoun that has already been mentioned. English uses the same
 forms as the reflexive pronouns; for example: I did it myself
(contrast reflexive use, I did it to myself). (Postal,1966: 181–5;
Betti, 2021z: 9).
 Direct and indirect object pronouns, such as le and lui in French.
English uses the same form for both; for example: Mary loves him
(direct object); Mary sent him a letter (indirect object).
 Prepositional pronouns, used after a preposition. English uses
ordinary object pronouns here: Mary looked at him.
 Disjunctive pronouns, used in isolation or in certain other special
grammatical contexts, like moi in French. No distinct forms exist
in English; for example: Who does this belong to? Me.
 Strong and weak forms of certain pronouns, found in some
languages such as Polish (Simon, and Wiese, 2002: 190; Betti,
2021aa: 4).
 Pronoun avoidance, where personal pronouns are substituted by
titles or kinship terms (particularly common in South-East Asia).

b. Possessive

Possessive pronouns are used to indicate possession (in a broad sense).

Some occur as independent noun phrases: mine, yours, hers, ours, theirs:

Those clothes are mine.

Others act as a determiner and must accompany a noun: my, your, her,
our, your, their, as in:

I lost my wallet. (His and its can fall into either category, although it is
nearly always found in the second.) (Simon, and Wiese, 2002: 190; and
Betti, 2021bb: 2).
 Those of the second type have traditionally also been described as
possessive adjectives, and in more modern terminology as possessive
determiners. The term "possessive pronoun" is sometimes restricted to the
first type. Both types replace possessive noun phrases (Huddleston and
Pullum, 2002). As an example, Their crusade to capture our attention
could replace The advertisers' crusade to capture our attention
(Postal,1966: 181–2; and Betti, 2002f: 57).

C. Reflexive and reciprocal

Reflexive pronouns are used when a person or thing acts on itself, for
example, John cut himself. In English they all end in -self or -selves and
must refer to a noun phrase elsewhere in the same clause.

Reciprocal pronouns refer to a reciprocal relationship (each other, one

another). They must refer to a noun phrase in the same clause. An
example in English is: They do not like each other. In some languages,
the same forms can be used as both reflexive and reciprocal pronouns.

D. Demonstrative

Demonstrative pronouns (in English, this, that and their plurals these,
those) often distinguish their targets by pointing or some other indication
of position; for example, I'll take these. They may also be anaphoric,
depending on an earlier expression for context, for example, A kid actor
would try to be all sweet, and who needs that? (Crystal, 1985; and Betti,
2021k: 16).

E. Indefinite

Indefinite pronouns, the largest group of pronouns, refer to one or more

unspecified persons or things. One group in English includes compounds
of some-, any-, every- and no- with -thing, -one and -body, for example:
Anyone can do that. Another group, including many, more, both, and
most, can appear alone or followed by of ) (Morley, 2004: 68–73; and
(Betti, 2021s: 7). In addition,

 Distributive pronouns are used to refer to members of a group

separately rather than collectively. (To each his own.)
 Negative pronouns indicate the non-existence of people or things.
(Nobody thinks that.)

Impersonal pronouns normally refer to a person but are not specific as to

first, second or third person in the way that the personal pronouns are.
(One does not clean one's own windows.) (Plotkin, 82–83; and Betti,
2021l: 4).

F. Relative and interrogative Pronouns

Relative

Relative pronouns in English include who, whom, whose, what, which

and that. They rely on an antecedent, and refer back to people or things
previously mentioned: People who smoke should quit now. They are used
in relative clauses. Relative pronouns can also be used as
complementizers (Huddleston and Pullum, 2002; Betti, 2021m: 15).

Interrogative

Relative pronouns can be used in an interrogative setting as interrogative

pronouns. Interrogative pronouns ask which person or thing is meant. In
reference to a person, one may use who (subject), whom (object) or
whose (possessive); for example, Who did that? In colloquial speech,
whom is generally replaced by who. English non-personal interrogative
pronouns (which and what) have only one form (Postal,1966: 185-6; and
(Betti, 2021ll: 5).

In English and many other languages (e.g. French and Czech), the sets
of relative and interrogative pronouns are nearly identical. Compare
English: Who is that? (interrogative) and I know the woman who came
(relative). In some other languages, interrogative pronouns and indefinite
pronouns are frequently identical (Crystal, 1985; and Betti, 2021b: 6).

G. Archaic forms

Though the personal pronouns described above are the current English
pronouns, Early Modern English (as used by Shakespeare, for example)
use a slightly different set of personal pronouns, shown in the table. The
difference is entirely in the second person. Though one would rarely find
these older forms used in recent literature, they are nevertheless
considered part of Modern English.

H. Kinship

In English, kin terms like "mother," "uncle," "cousin" are a distinct word
class from pronouns; however many Australian Aboriginal languages
have more elaborated systems of encoding kinship in language including
special kin forms of pronouns. In Murrinh-patha, for example, when
selecting a nonsingular exclusive pronoun to refer to a group, the speaker
will assess whether or not the members of the group belong to a common
class of gender or kinship. If all of the members of the referent group are
male, the MASCULINE form will be selected; if at least one is female,
the FEMININE is selected, but if all the members are in a sibling-like
kinship relation, a third SIBLING form is selected (Walsh, 1976).
 In Arabana-Wangkangurru, the speaker will use entirely different sets
of pronouns depending on whether the speaker and the referent are or are
not in a common moiety ) (Morley, 2004: 68–73; and Betti, 2021r: 3).

See the following example:

They two [who are in the classificatory relationship of father and son] are
fighting. (The people involved were a man and his wife's sister's son.)
(Hercus, 2018; and Betti, 2021gg: 2).

I. Generic you and Generic they

Some special uses of personal pronouns include (Plotkin, 82–83; and

(Betti, 2021hh: 5):

 Generic you, where second person pronouns are used in an

indefinite sense: You can't buy good old-fashioned bulbs these
days.
 Generic they: In China they drive on the right.

Gender non-specific uses, where a pronoun refers to a non-specific

person or a person whose gender is not specified: English usage and
acceptance varies (and has varied) regarding generic he and singular they,
among others (Hercus, 2018; and Betti, 2021ii: 1).

 A closely related usage is the singular they to refer to a person

whose gender is specified as non-binary or genderqueer, which has
gained popularity in LGBTQ+ culture in particular (Crystal, 1985).
Vernacular usage of "yo" as a gender neutral pronoun has also been
recorded among school students in Baltimore ("Yo as a Pronoun".
Quick and Dirty Tips. 2019) (Language Log: Yo".
itre.cis.upenn.edu.).
  Preferred gender pronoun selected to reflect gender identity

Dummy pronouns (expletive pronouns), used to satisfy a grammatical

requirement for a noun or pronoun, but contributing nothing to its
meaning: It is raining (Walsh, 1976; and Betti, 2021jj: 6).

 Royal we, used to refer to a single person who is a monarch: We

are not amused.
 Nosism: The use of the pronoun we to refer to oneself.
 Resumptive pronouns, "intrusive" personal pronouns found (for
example) in some relative clauses where a gap (trace) might be
expected: This is the girl that I don't know what she said
(Postal,1966: 181–5; and (Betti, kk: 3).

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