Object pronoun
In linguistics, an object pronoun is a personal pronoun that is used typically as a grammatical object: the direct or indirect object of a verb, or the object of a preposition. Object pronouns contrast with subject pronouns. Object pronouns in English take the objective case, sometimes called the oblique case or object case.[1] For example, the English object pronoun me is found in "They see me" (direct object), "He's giving me my book" (indirect object), and "Sit with me" (object of a preposition); this contrasts with the subject pronoun in "I see them," "I am getting my book," and "I am sitting here."
Modern English[edit]
The English personal and interrogative pronouns have the following subject and object forms:
| Singular subject pronoun |
Singular object pronoun |
|---|---|
| I | me |
| you | |
| he | him |
| she | her |
| it | |
| Plural subject pronoun |
Plural object pronoun |
|---|---|
| we | us |
| you | |
| they | them |
| Interrogative subject pronoun |
Interrogative object pronoun |
|---|---|
| who | whom |
| what | |
Middle English[edit]
Historically in Middle English the pronoun "you" had separate singular and plural forms with subjective and objective forms of both.
| Singular subject pronoun |
Singular Object pronoun |
|---|---|
| thou | thee |
| Plural subject pronoun |
Plural Object pronoun |
|---|---|
| ye | you |
Other languages[edit]
In some languages the direct object pronoun and the indirect object pronoun have separate forms. For example, in Spanish, direct object: Lo mandaron a la escuela (They sent him to school) and indirect object: Le mandaron una carta (They sent him a letter). Other languages divide object pronouns into a larger variety of classes. On the other hand, many languages, for example Persian, do not have distinct object pronouns: Man Farsi balad-am (I can speak Persian). Man ra mishenasad. (He knows me).
History[edit]
Object pronouns, in languages where they are distinguished from subject pronouns, are typically a vestige of an older case system. English, for example, once had an extensive declension system that specified distinct accusative and dative case forms for both nouns and pronouns. And after a preposition, a noun or pronoun could be in either of these cases, or in the genitive or instrumental case. With the exception of the genitive (the "apostrophe-s" form), in nouns this system disappeared entirely, while in personal pronouns it collapsed into a single case, covering the roles of both accusative and dative, as well as all instances after a preposition. That is, the new oblique (object) case came to be used for the object of either a verb or a preposition, contrasting with the genitive, which links two nouns.
For a discussion of the use of historically object pronouns in subject position in English (e.g. "Jay and me will arrive later"), see the article on English personal pronouns.
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (London: Longman, 1985), p. 337.