There are several different types of pronouns.  They all have a role to play in English.  There are Personal Pronouns (covered in Basic English, lesson 5), Compound Personal Pronouns, Interrogative Pronouns, Demonstrative Pronouns, Indefinite Pronouns and Relative Pronouns.  This lesson will cover the last five types.

NOTE: When you use a Reflexive Pronoun, there must ALWAYS be a word in the sentence that refers to the same person or thing.  In the sentences above, I and MYSELF are the same person; SALLY and HERSELF are the same person; DOG and ITSELF are the same thing.

Ways in which one should NOT use reflexive pronouns:

• My brother and myself will be glad to help you. (The correct way is: My brother and I will be glad ......)
• The Mayor sent an invitation to Mr. Smith and ourselves.  (Correct way:  .......to Mr. Smith and us.)

As their name implies, these pronouns are used in asking questions.  There are only three:  WHO, WHICH, WHAT.  The first one, however, has three forms.  WHO is the subject form; WHOSE is the possessive form; WHOM is the object form.  Each of these pronouns can serve as the subject of a sentence, the object of the verb, or the object of a preposition.  They are called pronouns because they take the place of the noun in a sentence.

These pronouns point out definite persons, places or things.  There are only two, or four if you count the plural forms separately:  THIS, THESE, THAT, THOSE.  What can often confuse a student of English is the fact that these same words can also be used as adjectives.  How can you tell the difference?  Demonstrative Pronouns are used in place of nouns.  Demonstrative Adjectives are used with nouns.

This large group of pronouns are called Indefinite because they do NOT point out particular persons, places or things.  They can all be used in place of nouns, which is why they are called pronouns, but they are also a little vague, or INDEFINITE, about how many or which nouns they take the place of.  Here is a list of the most common Indefinite Pronouns.

Here we have another case of certain words doing double duty.  Relative Pronouns are who, which, that and what , with who again having the possessive form, whose, and the object form, whom.  Do those words look familiar?  Who, which and what were earlier in the lesson called Interrogative Pronouns.  That was called a Demonstrative Pronoun.  Now we are calling them all Relative Pronouns.  How can you tell what the words are when you see them in a sentence?  This is a good place for a Word of Wisdom.

NOTE:  The grammatical label attached to a word depends more on what job the word is doing in a sentence than on what the word looks like.  Examples:  HIT looks like a verb.  In fact, it can be a verb if it is used like this:  "The car went out of control and HIT a tree."  But what about this sentence:  "In yesterday's baseball game, Don had three HITS."  Now HITS is a noun.  We know this because Don had three of them, and only nouns can be counted.  Next we have "Shirley just had to buy the group's new HIT record."  Now HIT is telling us what kind of record Shirley was buying, which is a job for an Adjective.  The same word, HIT, just had three different grammatical labels.  The same can be true for many words in English, including Who, Which, That and What.  To determine what grammatical label should be stuck on the words, you need to look closely at what position they are filling or what job they are performing in the sentence.

Definition:  A Relative Pronoun joins the clause which it introduces to its own antecedent, the noun or pronoun to which it refers.

"Harry is the driver who won the stock car race."   'who won the stock car race' is an Adjectival Clause which describes driver.  who introduces the clause and also refers back to and means the same thing as  driver .

"Those magazines are the ones that we subscribe to."  'that we subscribe to' is another Adjectival Clause, describing ones.  that introduces the clause and means the same thing as ones. 

Extra Note:  WHO is used whenever the antecedent is a person.  WHICH is used for anything except a person,  THAT is used for persons or things.

1. Mrs. Johnson took (his, her, hers) children with (her, herself, them) when (her, she, they) went to the mall.

2. (Their, Them, They)  behaved well for the first hour, but then the boredom began to affect (them, themselves, they).

3. Rodney took off (his, her, their) own hat and left it with (those, these, them) he saw on a store rack.

4. (His, Him, Her) sister, Julia, decided to go shopping (himself, herself, herselves) and wandered away.

5. (Nobody, Some, Someone) called to (her, herself, hers), "Are (we, you, your) lost, little girl?"

6. Julia pretended that (her, she, he) heard (anybody, nobody, none) and kept walking away.

7. Soon, Mrs. Johnson realized that Rodney had no hat and (they, she, we) had no daughter.

8. Without worrying what (nobody, everybody, several) would think, (she, herself, they) called out loudly, "Julia! (Your, You, Yours) get (yourself, yourselves, you self) back here right now!."

1. __________ wish ____________ could go to the movies together without _________ little brother.

2. The taxi driver told _________ passenger that _____________ might be late getting to the airport because ________ was the middle of rush hour.

3. Jerry said that __________ hit ______________ with a hammer the last time ____________ tried to hang a picture.

4. Would ____________ believe that ______________ in the office likes the boss?

5. "___________ is the color _____________ want for the walls,"  Ms. Murphy told _________ decorator.

6. ________________ leaves the garage door open should be more careful.

7. " Are ____________ sure that ____________ told ________________ about the surprise party?" Betty asked.

8. "__________ am sure that the job was done right," Herman stated, "because the owner did it _________________."

9.   Mary said _____________ was not going to take the blame for __________________ else's mistakes.

10. "______________ of these sofas do ___________ prefer?"  the salesman asked ____________ customer.