Personal pronoun
Personal pronouns may also take different forms depending on number (usually singular or plural), grammatical or natural gender, case, and formality.
For example, Tok Pisin has seven first-person pronouns according to number (singular, dual, trial, plural) and clusivity, such as mitripela ("they two and I") and yumitripela ("you two and I").
This occurs in English with the third-person singular pronouns, where (simply put) he is used when referring to a man, she to a woman, singular they to a person whose gender is unknown or unspecified at the time that the pronoun is being used or to a person who does not identify as either a man or a woman, and it to something inanimate or an animal of unspecific sex.
This is an example of pronoun selection based on natural gender; many languages also have selection based on grammatical gender (as in French, where the pronouns il and elle are used with masculine and feminine antecedents respectively, as are the plurals ils and elles).
In a language such as English, it is derogatory to use the inanimate pronoun it to refer to a person (except in some cases to a small child), and although it is traditional to use the masculine he to refer to a person of unspecified gender, the movement towards gender-neutral language requires that another method be found, such as saying he or she.
Similar issues arise in some languages when referring to a group of mixed gender; these are dealt with according to the conventions of the language in question (in French, for example, the masculine ils "they" is used for a group containing both men and women or antecedents of both masculine and feminine gender).
Mandarin, for example, introduced, in the early 20th century a different character for she (她), which is pronounced identically as he (他) and thus is still indistinguishable in speech (tā).
[citation needed] Many languages have different pronouns, particularly in the second person, depending on the degree of formality or familiarity.
In informal situations, women may use the colloquial atashi, and men may use the rougher ore. Pronouns also often take different forms based on their syntactic function, and in particular on their grammatical case.
Languages whose nouns inflect for case often inflect their pronouns according to the same case system; for example, German personal pronouns have distinct nominative, genitive, dative and accusative forms (ich, meiner, mir, mich; etc.).
Pronouns often retain more case distinctions than nouns – this is true of both German and English, and also of the Romance languages, which (with the exception of Romanian) have lost the Latin grammatical case for nouns, but preserve certain distinctions in the personal pronouns.
[6][7] Examples are found in Polish, where the masculine third-person singular accusative and dative forms are jego and jemu (strong) and go and mu (weak).
In Australian languages, it is common for free pronouns to be reserved exclusively for human (and sometimes other animate) referents.
[8] Examples of languages with animacy restrictions on free pronouns include Wanyjirra,[9] Bilinarra,[10] Warrongo,[11] Guugu Yimidhirr[12] and many others.
These various forms are exemplified below: Nyimu-ludog-ERGpalu-nya3-ABSpatjar-nubite-PSTNyimu-lu palu-nya patjar-nudog-ERG 3-ABS bite-PST'The dog bit it'i-3-ng-PST-jalgoofall-ij-PFVi- ng- jalgoo -ij3- PST- fall -PFV'he/she/it fell.
In such languages it is common for personal pronouns to appear in subject position only if they are needed to resolve ambiguity or if they are stressed.
In many European languages, but not English, the second-person pronouns are often capitalized for politeness when they refer to the person one is writing to (such as in a letter).
