The pronoun (Ilysh’s classification). The category of case and number

some pronouns share essential peculiarities of nouns. Some pronouns combine with verbs (he speaks, find him), while others can also combine with a following noun (this room). We usually find in grammars a classification of pronouns into personal, possessive, interrogative, indefinite, relative, etc. It is clear, however, that some points in that classification are not grammatical at all. Thus, if we say, for example, that a pronoun is indefinite we do not characterise it from a grammatical but from a semantic point of view. There is no doubt that the pronoun something is indefinite in its meaning, but that indef-initeness of meaning is in no way reflected either in its morphological properties or in its syntactical functions. This is as much as to say that the indefiniteness of its meaning is irrelevant from the grammatical viewpoint. In a similar way, if we state that the pronoun nothing is negative, we characterise its meaning and a most important characteristic it is, too), but, again, this is irrel-evant for grammar, since it does not entail anything concerning the morphological or syntactical peculiarities of the word. Therefore, in proceeding to a study of pronouns, we will try to keep the grammat-ical viewpoint firmly in mind, though this will not always be an easy thing to do. CASE

In dealing with the category of case in pronouns, we must bear in mind that they need not in this respect be similar to nouns .Some of them may, and indeed do, have peculiarities which no noun shares.

Some pronouns distinguish between two cases which are best termed nominative and objective (instead of nominative we might also say subjective). NUMBER/ It ought to be emphasised that what we mean here is the gram-matical category of number, and the question is, in what pronouns and to what extent that category is actually found. There is no grammatical category of number either in the pro-nouns my / our; his, her, its / their, and mine / ours; his, hers / theirs. E. g., her and their are different words, not different forms of one word. A peculiar difficulty arises here with reference to the pronouns myself / (ourself), ourselves; yourself / yourselves; himself, herself, itself / themselves. If we compare the two pronouns myself and ourselves, we shall see at once that the difference between the first elements of the two words is purely lexical (just as in the corresponding words my and our), whereas the second elements differ from each other by the same suffix -s that is used to form the plural of most nouns. 1 Thus we are brought to the conclusion that ourselves is es-sentially a different word from myself. There are no other grammatical categories in the English pro-noun: there is no category of gender. The pronouns he, she, it, and also the pronouns his, her, Us; his, hers; himself, herself, itself, are all separate words. Thus, she is not a form of the word he but a separate word in its own right.

36. Distinction of types and pronouns. There are many examples in English pronouns of the same pho-netic unit used to express different meanings in different contexts. So the question arises whether this is a case of polysemy, that is, different meanings of the same word, or of homonymy, that is, dif-ferent words sounding alike. We may state the following cases in point: that demonstrative and that relative; who interrogative and who relative; which interrogative and which relative; my-self (and the other self-pronouns) reflexive, and the same pronouns intensive (non-reflexive). That seems to be the easiest of the problems to settle, as we can apply the test of the plural form here. The demonstrative that has a plural form those, whereas the relative that re-mains unchanged in the plural. It is obvious that the that which remains unchanged in the plural cannot be the same word as the that which has the plural form those. So we arrive at the conclusion that there are two different pronouns: that (relative) and that / those (demonstra-tive, parallel to this). With the other pronouns mentioned above no criterion of this kind can be applied, as they, none of them, have any spe-cial plural form. So, if that question is to be solved at all, we shall have to look for criteria of a different kind, which may not prove so decisive as the one we applied in the case of that. We shall have to rely on meaning and syntactical func-tion. It is not hard to distinguish between the interrogative and the relative meaning in the pronouns who, what, and which. It is also evident that the relative who, what, and which can intro-duce subordinate clauses. However, it is not so easy to say whether the pronoun what is interrogative or relative in a sentence like the following: I know what you mean.