A word that stands in for a noun phrase — 'she', 'it', 'them'.
In precise terms
A closed class of items that refer without describing, taking their reference from the discourse context or the situation. Pronoun systems commonly encode person, number, and often gender, case, formality or clusivity.
An example
Ben onu görmedim.
I did not see him/her/it.
What is going on here
Turkish 'onu' is a third-person pronoun in the accusative case. It makes no gender distinction at all — the same form covers 'him', 'her' and 'it' — so the English translation has to choose something the Turkish does not specify.
Why this matters when you are learning a language
Pronoun systems differ more than learners expect, and the differences are socially loaded: choosing the wrong second-person form can be rude in one language and merely odd in another.
Across languages
Many languages distinguish formal and familiar 'you' (French tu/vous, German du/Sie). Some distinguish inclusive from exclusive 'we' — whether the addressee is included. Some, like Japanese, use nouns and titles where European languages use pronouns, and drop them entirely when the referent is clear.
Related terms
- NounBeginner — A word for a thing, person, place, idea or quality.
- DeixisAdvanced — Words whose meaning depends entirely on who is speaking, where and when — 'I', 'here', 'yesterday'.
- Grammatical caseIntermediate — Endings on nouns showing their role in the sentence — who did it, who it was done to, whose it is.
- SubjectBeginner — The part of a clause that the verb agrees with — usually who or what performs the action.
- DeterminerBeginner — A noun-phrase item, such as an article or demonstrative, that helps anchor or quantify what the phrase refers to.
- CliticAdvanced — A small grammatical form that cannot stand prosodically on its own and leans on a neighbouring word.
Where to go next
- Language guides — See grammatical and lexical categories used in context.
- Terminology quiz — Test the terms on this page.