Pronoun

Summary

A pronoun is a word that indirectly refers to a person or a thing. For example: “John” is a proper name, “man” is a common noun, and “he” is a pronoun; but all three terms can refer to the same person named “John”.

Article

Types

There are five categories of pronouns in both Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic.

Demonstrative pronoun

A demonstrative pronoun refers to a specific person(s) or thing(s) in particular. In English, the following words are demonstrative pronouns: “this”, “that”, “these”, “those”.

Indefinite pronoun

An indefinite pronoun is a pronoun that refers to a person(s) or thing(s) in general but not to any specific person or thing in particular. In English, they are usually translated as “whoever” (in reference to persons) or “whatever” (when referring to things).

Interrogative pronoun

An interrogative pronoun is a pronoun that appears at the beginning of a clause/sentence and indicates that the clause/sentence is an interrogative question rather than an indicative statement.

Personal pronoun

Relative pronoun

A relative pronoun is a pronoun that functions as a relative particle, that is, to introduce a phrase or clause that describes a noun.