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
DET
category. 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, what as in I wonder what you think. (Note, however, that some relative clause introducing words, such as [en] that are better analyzed as subordinating conjunctions (otherwise known as “complementizers” in the literature), and so are tagged as SCONJ.)
- indefinite pronouns: somebody, something, anybody, anything
- total pronouns: everybody, everything
- negative pronouns: nobody, nothing
References
PRON in other languages: [am] [ar] [bg] [bxr] [ca] [ckb] [cop] [cs] [cu] [da] [de] [el] [en] [es] [et] [eu] [fa] [fi] [fo] [fr] [ga] [gl] [got] [grc] [he] [hi] [hr] [hu] [id] [it] [ja] [kk] [kmr] [ko] [la] [lv] [mr] [nl] [no] [pl] [pt] [ro] [ru] [sa] [sk] [sla] [sl] [so] [sr] [sv] [swl] [ta] [tr] [ug] [uk] [u] [urj] [ur] [vi] [yue] [zh]