Do pronouns count as nouns? i'm not sure if i should include she, he, etc... as nouns on my worksheet.
2 Answers
Yes (but it might be safer not to use pronouns on your worksheet, depending on what it is)
Explanation:
Syntax is the study of parts of a sentence.
Pronouns and nouns occupy the same point in the sentence syntactically and have the same function, so pronouns are a type of noun.
Pronouns are simply used instead of giving the noun its proper name, e.g. 'he' instead of 'Socrates'.
Nouns, pronouns and nouns with one or more adjectives all class as noun phrases or NP's.
It's probably safer not to use pronouns as nouns on your worksheet because it's questionable that they are exactly the same. Use better examples of nouns, like 'worksheet'.
Explanation:
I'd like to expand a bit on this because before I started diving in on this I would have said that pronouns are nouns on the basis of pronouns being stand-ins for nouns. But after reading some more, I am of the opinion that pronouns are not nouns. Here's why:
A noun refers to a person, place, or thing.
A pronoun is a stand-in. It can replace a noun but it can also replace other pronouns and can also replace certain adjective and adverbs (for example, I can say There are 5 coloured pages. Please take one of each - "each" is a pronoun used as an adverb). Nouns don't and can't - which means a pronoun isn't a noun.
http://www.gingersoftware.com/content/grammar-rules/pronouns-2/
