What is Pronoun Case?
Pronoun case is a way of describing what a person is doing in a specific sentence. The name pronoun identifies a grammatical unit, sometimes called a part of speech. By contrast, case identifies the prounoun's function in a sentence.
To begin, let's review the definition of a pronoun as a grammatical part of speech:
A pronoun is a word that replaces or renames a noun or another pronoun.
Since a pronoun can replace a noun, the pronoun can serve any function a noun serves. Look at the following examples:
- Pronoun as subject
- Pronoun as predicate noun
- Pronoun as direct object
- Pronoun as indirect object
- Pronoun as object of a preposition
The same noun can perform any of these functions in a sentence without changing its form. Pronouns, however, change their form.
For example, in the following sentence, the noun Heather may be used either as a subject or as an object of the preposition. Note, however, that different pronouns are required for these different functions:
Pronoun case describes the form a pronoun takes to serve a specific function. The three pronoun cases--subjective, objective, and possessive--will be explained in detail on the following screens.