PRON

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`PRON`: pronoun

PRON is used for English pronouns, such as we, her, it, who, and that when used as a relative pronoun.

The English PRON corresponds to the PTB PRP, PRP$, WP, WP$, EX, and certain things that are tagged DT or WDT (question and Wh pronouns, such as who, this, and that), when they comprise a nominal by themselves rather than functioning as the determiner of a nominal head (usually a noun).

Personal pronouns

Lemmas that differ from the inflected form are shown in brackets. (The accusative is lemmatized to match the nominative, and the independent possessive is lemmatized to match the dependent possessive.)

Variant forms are italicized, with additional features described below the table.

`PronType=Prs`*	Nominative `Case=Nom`	Accusative `Case=Acc`	Dependent Possessive `Case=Gen`, `Poss=Yes`	Independent Possessive `Poss=Yes`	Reflexive `Case=Acc`, `Reflex=Yes`
`Person=1`, `Number=Sing`	I	me [I]	my	mine [my]	myself
`Person=1`, `Number=Plur`	we	us [we], ’s [we]	our	ours [our]	ourselves
`Person=2`	you, u [you], ya	you, u [you], ya	your, ur [your], yo	yours [your]
`Person=2`, `Number=Sing`	thou	thee [thou]	thy	thine [thy]	yourself, thyself
`Person=2`, `Number=Plur`	ye	y’all			yourselves
`Person=3`, `Number=Sing`, `Gender=Masc`	he	him [he]	his	his	himself
`Person=3`, `Number=Sing`, `Gender=Fem`	she	her [she]	her	hers [her]	herself
`Person=3`, `Number=Sing`, `Gender=Neut`	it	it	its	its	itself
`Person=3`, `Number=Sing`	one	one			oneself
`Person=3`, `Number=Plur`	they	them [they], ’em	their	theirs [their]	themselves
XPOS (PTB)	PRP	PRP	PRP$	PRP	PRP

* Some reflexives (I myself am…) are PronType=Emp.

In the table, one is the use to refer to a generic individual (PRP in PTB); other uses are mentioned below. Genericity is not made explicit in the features.

Variant forms associated with features (in addition to the features associated with the standard counterpart):

Abbr=Yes: u, ur. As these are abbreviations, the lemma will reflect the standard spelling (you, your).
Style=Arch: archaic forms ye, thou, thee, thy, thine, thyself (from Early Modern English) are retained in some idioms. These mark a combination of number and formality. The features only represent the number distinction. For you, your, etc., the modern, number-unspecified interpretation is assumed.
Style=Coll: ya, ’em
Style=Slng: yo
Style=Vrnc: y’all

The contracted form of us in let’s is treated like other standard contractions (e.g. n’t), receiving the same lemma (we) and features as its noncontracted counterpart.

Relative/interrogative (WH) pronouns

These are either PronType=Int (interrogative) or PronType=Rel (relative). PronType is the only feature except where shown below.

WH	Plain	-ever	Possessive
wh.anim	who, whom (WP)	whoever, whosoever, whomever (WP)	whose (WP$)
wh.inanim	what, wtf (WP)	whatever (WP)	whose (WP$)
wh.det	which (WDT)	whichever (WDT)

Relative that is also considered a PRON in UD (XPOS WDT).

The table shows only PRON forms. Note that what, whatever, and which are tagged DET when functioning as det (WDT).

The variant wtf receives Style=Expr. The variant whosoever receives Style=Form.

TODO: “no/any N whatsoever”: whatsoever is currently ADV in EWT but maybe PRON is better. Unlike whosoever, this use of whatsoever is not formal; maybe Style=Expr or even PronType=Emp.

TODO: whatever is sometimes DET+WDT even when not det

TODO: tag whom(ever) for case; lemmatize whom as who and whomever as whoever

TODO: add Poss=Yes and possibly Case=Gen for whose. Do we want to distinguish dependent (Case=Gen) and independent uses? Unlike what, whatever, which, all whose instances are currently tagged PRON.

TODO: exclamative what is PRON+WDT?

Indefinite pronouns

These are NN in PTB but PRON in UD. A feature indicating the type of pronoun is provided as shown in the table below. These also receive the feature Number=Sing.

INDEFINITE		one	body	thing
`PronType=Tot`		everyone	everybody	everything
`PronType=Ind` (any)		anyone	anybody	anything
`PronType=Ind` (some)		someone	somebody	something
`PronType=Neg`	none, naught	no one	nobody	nothing

Note that the Ind (indefinite) value of the PronType feature is narrower in UD than the general use of the term “indefinite pronoun”: Ind specifically refers to the some- and any- varieties. These two varieties are not currently distinguished with features.

For no one, written as two words, no is tagged as DET, and one is tagged as PRON with PronType=Neg. (It can also be spelled as one hyphenated word.)

N.B. when, wherever, somewhere, etc. are tagged as ADV, not PRON.

Demonstrative pronouns

Always DT in PTB, but UD uses PRON when these head a nominal.

`PronType=Dem`	`Number=Sing`	`Number=Plur`
prox	this	these [this]
dist	that	those [that]

The proximal/distal distinction is not encoded in features, but each corresponds to a unique lemma.

Note that ADVs here and there also receive PronType=Dem.

Expletive there

Expletive there (EX) receives no features.

By contrast, it is considered a personal pronoun (PRP) even when functioning as expl.

Reciprocal pronouns

Reciprocal pronouns each other and one another receive the feature PronType=Rcp and are analyzed structurally with fixed.

Examples with tags:

They saw each/DET other/ADJ
fixed(each, other)
obj(saw, each)

They saw one/PRON another/DET
fixed(one, another)
obj(saw, one)

Uses of one

According to the PTB tagging guidelines, one should be

CD by default, even when not a prenominal modifier, e.g. one of the best reasons, BUT
a pronoun if referring to a generic individual (roughly ‘a person’): see personal pronoun table above
NN(S) “if it could be pluralized or modified by an adjective”, and in another one

These correspond to UPOS tags NUM, PRON, and NOUN, respectively. However, we depart from PTB in treating one as a pronoun in no one and one another, as described above.

PRON in other languages: [bej] [bg] [bm] [cs] [cy] [da] [de] [el] [en] [es] [ess] [et] [fi] [fro] [fr] [ga] [grc] [hu] [hy] [it] [ja] [ka] [kk] [kpv] [ky] [myv] [nci] [no] [pcm] [pt] [qpm] [ru] [sla] [sl] [sv] [tr] [tt] [uk] [u] [urj] [xcl] [yue] [zh]

PRON: pronoun