Pronominit

Pronominit, in Finnish grammar often used as the term for pronouns, are a closed class of words that substitute for nouns or noun phrases. They help refer to people, objects, or ideas without repeating the noun itself, and they commonly carry information about person, number, and sometimes gender and case. Across languages, pronominit serve similar functions but differ in how they are marked and used in sentences.

The main subtypes of pronominit include personal pronouns (first, second, and third person forms such as I, you, he/she), possessive pronouns (forms like mine, yours, his/hers), demonstrative pronouns (this, that, these, those), reflexive pronouns (myself, yourself, themselves), relative pronouns (who, which, that), interrogative pronouns (who, what, which), and indefinite pronouns (someone, anything, many). Some languages also have reciprocal pronouns (each other) and distributive pronouns. The exact inventory and naming of subtypes vary by language.

In sentence structure, pronominit can function as subjects or objects, and they can also serve as determiners or heads of noun phrases in some languages. They may appear as independent words or as affixes or clitics attached to verbs or other elements. Morphology often includes information about case or agreement with verbs, adjectives, or nouns. In pro-drop languages, subject pronouns may be omitted when the verb form already encodes the person and number.

Language-specific details vary: some languages inflect pronominit for case, number, or gender; others rely on word order and discourse context. Over time, many languages have adopted inclusive or gender-neutral pronouns, reflecting changing social usage. Pronominit thus centralize reference, cohesion, and economy in communication across languages.