PRONOUNS, the name given by grammarians to certain words which are used as substitutes for the names of persons and things.
Pronouns properly so called are commonly divided into personal, demonstrative, relative, and interrogative pronouns ; but it appears probable that all pronouns, at least with the exception of the first and second personal pronouns, were originally demonstrative. William Humboldt remarks that the first and second personal pronouns " are not mere substitutes for the names of the persons for whom they stand, but involve the personality of the speaker and of the person spoken to, and the relation between them;" and in writing and con versation there is frequently hardly any name which can so clearly designate the person intended as the appropriate personal pronoun. The third personal pronoun in English appears to have been originally a demonstrative, and to contain the same root, ta, sa, or ha, which occurs in the demonstrative pronoun in the Latin, Greek, and other cognate languages.
The relative pronoun may also be regarded as a demonstrative ; for whether the pronoun is used to denote an object pointed out at the time by the speaker, or an object mentioned just before, or one which is to be immediately brought before the hearer's mind, it is equally demonstrative. In the last of these cases the pronoun is called a relative, as " I saw the man whom you mentioned." In English wo have two forms for the relative, that and who or which. The former is the same word as the demonstrative; the latter contains the same root as we find in the Latin qui, the Sanscrit, Zend, and Lithuanian kg, and the .Gothic lever and kea. The interrogative pronoun is the same as the relative in English and many of the cognate languages, and only differs from the relative in referring to something subsequent and unknown ; whereas the latter refers to an antecedent and definite subject.