There is widespread uncertainty about the meaning and use of terms like ‘pronoun’, ‘demonstrative’ and ‘determiner’. The following is a multiple classification of proforms by the criteria found relevant in the linguistic literature.
Major categories
A proform is a grammatical formative (word or index) that belongs to any of the three major categories:
| major category | proform | example |
|---|---|---|
| substantive | pronoun | she |
| adjective | pro-adjective = determiner | the |
| adverb | pro-adverb | there |
The first column of this table uses the traditional terms for the major classes. This is useful for the reason explained below.
The assignments in the table are commonly made despite the fact that the distribution of proforms commonly differs from the distribution of lexical items of the “same” category. In particular:
- A free pronoun usually has the distribution of a proper noun or of a noun phrase of the language, rather than of a common noun.
- A determiner does not have the same distribution as a lexical adjective of the language. Instead, it usually combines syntagmatically with adjectival attributes, only sharing with these their function of adnominal dependent.
- A pro-adverb often differs from lexical adverbs in obeying different ordering rules.
Thus, the assignment of a proform to one of the three major categories generally does not result from a distributional analysis, but instead is based on the functions of these proforms:
- A pronoun may be a referential expression like a noun phrase.
- A determiner is an adnominal modifier, like an adjective functioning as an attribute.
- A pro-adverb is a modifier at the clause level.
Moreover, the structural status of an index is generally below the status of a free form. It may be clitic or affixal or even just a morphological modification of its host. In none of these cases can they be assigned to any of the major categories by distributional similarity. For this reason, indexes will be kept out of consideration in the following. It may be recalled, though, that most indexes are in the category of personal proforms.
Pro-adverbs are generally subclassified by their semantic function, including essentially local, temporal and manner adverbs.
Semantic features
Beside the classification of proforms by the criterion of major category or rather by the functions of the major categories, there is a classification by their semantic features, as follows:
| semantic category | definition | example |
|---|---|---|
| personal | proform referencing an entity deictically or phorically | hers |
| demonstrative | proform referencing non-speech-act participants deictically | this |
| interrogative | proform representing the thing or notion asked for | which |
| indefinite | proform signalling non-fixed reference | any |
| negative | proform negating an indefinite proform | none |
Some of the above have important subcategories. The following are recurrent subcategories of personal proforms:
- A first or second person pronoun refers deictically. A third person pronoun may refer deictically or anaphorically.
- A possessive proform is a proform incorporating a personal pronoun representing the possessor of a noun.
- A possessive determiner is a determiner indicating a personal pronoun as the possessor of its operand.
- A possessive pronoun is a pronoun incorporating a dummy (or non-overt) noun and the latter's possessive determiner.
- A pronoun taking the place of a personal pronoun under certain conditions of intra-sentential coreference is a reflexive pronoun.
- A pronoun signalling coreference like a reflexive pronoun, but for a set of referents whose members are mutually related, is a reciprocal pronoun.
Indefinite proforms typically comprise what logicians call quantifiers. For instance, ‘some’ and ‘several’ may be in the distribution class of indefinite determiners.
Cross-classification
The criterion of major class and the criterion of semantic category cross-classify as follows:
major class semantic category | substantive | adjective | adverb |
|---|---|---|---|
| personal | I, mine, herself, each other | my | - |
| demonstrative | this (one) | this, the | there |
| interrogative | who | which | where |
| indefinite | one, somebody | some, any, a | anywhere |
| negative | nobody | no | nowhere |
Determiners and pronouns
A determiner is a proform which determines a nominal.
If a word, the determiner is a pro-adjective. If bound, the nominal is its morphological host.
Kinds of determiners include
- article
- possessive determiner
- demonstrative determiner
- indefinite or interrogative determiner.
Many languages do not distinguish formally between pro-substantives and pro-adjectives in some or all of the semantic categories (just as some languages do not distinguish substantives and adjectives at all). In particular, members of the following semantic categories may be used as a noun phrase or as a determiner:
- a demonstrative pronoun like Engl. this
- a possessive proform like Latin meus ‘my, mine’
- an indefinite proform like Latin alter ‘the other (one)’.
Such proforms may be designated by the term ‘pronoun’ in the traditional sense, i.e. comprising pro-substantives and pro-adjectives.
Given the above classifications, on the one hand, and the impossibility of delimiting the grammatical against the lexical, on the other, an extensional definition of ‘proform’ may be useful. A proform then is a grammatical word or index that belongs to any of the three major classes and to any of the semantic categories enumerated above.