pronominal

Pronominal is an adjective used in linguistics to describe items that function as pronouns or otherwise refer to noun phrases without repeating them. A pronominal form substitutes for a nominal expression or marks reference to a person or thing. The term covers standalone pronouns as well as determiner-like forms that accompany a noun and serve a pronominal function.

Categories commonly described as pronominal include personal pronouns (I, you, he, she, it, we, they), demonstratives (this, that), interrogatives (who, what), relative pronouns (which, that), and possessives (my/mine, your/yours). Reflexive forms (myself, herself) and reciprocal forms (each other, one another) are also treated as pronominal. In many analyses, possessives and certain determiners function pronominally when they replace a noun phrase.

Morphology and syntax vary across languages. Pronominal elements may appear as standalone words, as clitics attached to verbs or nouns, or as affixes. In Romance languages, clitic pronouns attach to the verb and can determine word order or agreement. Some languages employ pro-drop morphology, omitting subject pronouns when the verb inflection already encodes person and number. Pronominal reference also interacts with anaphora and binding theory, as pronouns typically rely on antecedents in discourse.

Pronominalization, the process of replacing a noun phrase with a pronominal form, helps streamline discourse and avoid repetition. The study of pronominal systems covers a wide range of phenomena, including agreement, case marking, clitic placement, and the ways languages encode deixis, reference, and role of discourse participants.