pronume

Pronume is the Romanian term for pronoun, a word class that substitutes for nouns or noun phrases, or refers to them in discourse. Pronume help to identify who or what is being talked about and to avoid repetition. They encode referent information such as person (first, second, third), number (singular, plural), and, depending on language, gender and case. The term pronume derives from the Latin pronomen, meaning “in place of a name.”

Pronume are typically divided into major subtypes: personal pronouns (I, you, he/she, we, they), possessive pronouns (mine, yours, his/hers, ours, theirs) or possessive determiners, demonstratives (this, that, these, those), relative pronouns (who, which, that), interrogatives (who, what, which), reflexive pronouns (myself, yourself), and indefinite pronouns (someone, anything). Some languages also distinguish clitic pronouns that attach to verbs or prepositions.

In grammar, pronume normally agree with their antecedents in person and number and may show gender or case. They can occur as subjects, objects, or determiners. In many languages, subject pronume can be omitted if the verb form encodes the subject, a feature known as pro-drop. Romanian, for example, uses clitic object pronume and allows dropping of subject pronume in typical sentences. The study of pronume encompasses cross-linguistic variation in form, function, and syntactic position, as well as their role in reference and cohesion in discourse.