Personal and Impersonal Pronoun

By now you know about pronoun and it’s different types and how to use a pronoun. But do you know what personal pronouns are? And what do impersonal pronouns mean? Let’s find out more about them in the section below.

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Personal Pronouns

The pronouns used for the names of person, animals, and things are called personal pronouns. Let’s look at the following sentences, the words in bold letters are examples of personal pronouns:

• He plays with us.
• You go to college daily.
• I respect my mother.
• They also love me.

In the above sentences, the words He, You, I, They, Us, Me (in the bold letters) are used for the names of persons. So, these are called personal pronouns.

Types of Personal Pronouns

Personal pronouns stand for three persons :

1. First Person: The Pronouns used for the person speaking.
2. Second Person: The Pronouns used for the person spoken to.
3. Third Person: The Pronouns used for the person spoken about.

Browse more Topics under Pronoun

• Introduction to Pronoun
• Relative Pronoun
• Demonstrative, Indefinite and Distributive Pronouns

Here, below study the table that shows different forms of Personal Pronouns :

	SUBJECT (Nominative)	OBJECT (Objective)	POSSESSIVE
First Person	I	Me	My and Mine
	We	Us	Our and Ours
Second Person	You	You	Your and Yours
Third Person	He	Him	His and His
	She	Her	Her and Hers
	They	Them	Their and Theirs
	It	It	Its and It’s

• When the above pronouns are used as the subject of the verb, they are said to be in the Nominative Case. For example :

We are going to school.

They arrived late for the meeting.

• When the above pronouns are used as the object of the verb, they are said to be in the Objective Case. For example

The secretary called them for the final decision.

The pronoun ‘them’ is the object of the verb and answers the question ‘the secretary called whom?

• When the above pronoun denotes possession/ownership, they are said to be in the Possessive Case. For example :

That is my dog.

Our house is very close to the market.

‘My’ and ‘Our’ are in the possessive case. They both answer the question ‘whose house’? A few more examples to study the possessive forms :

This is my (Possessive Adjective)

This bicycle is mine. (Possessive Noun)

The Possessive forms my, our, your, his, her, their are now called Possessive Adjectives because they are used before Nouns and work as Adjectives. They are also called Determiners. 

Impersonal Pronouns

There is another type of pronoun called improper pronoun (e.g. ‘it’), the rules for the use of it are stated as follows:

We use ‘IT’	Examples
For non-living things or an idea –	It is a pen. Here is your book, take it
For animals, unless we clearly wish to speak of them as male or female	The horse fell and broke its leg
For a young child, unless we clearly wish to refer to its sex	When I saw the child, it was crying.
To refer to some statement going before	He told a lie and he knows it.
To give emphasis on the Noun or Pronoun following it	It is you who are to be blamed.

Question For You

Q: Fill in the blanks with a personal and impersonal pronoun.

• ___ is the opinion of the public.
• ___ is raining.
• ___ am doing fine.
• ___ accent is really cool.
• ___ is easy to find fault.
• ___ are best friends.
• ___ snows. ___ hails.
• ___ love watching the stars.
• ___ is easy to find fault.
• ___ is doubtful whether the play will continue.

Ans.

• It is the opinion of the public.
• It is raining.
• I am doing fine.
• Her accent is really cool.
• It is easy to find fault.
• We are best friends.
• It snows. It hails.
• I love watching the stars.
• It is easy to find fault.
• It is doubtful whether the play will continue.