Even though sentences have only one subject, they can have many nouns. We don’t always write or speak each noun each time we refer to it or talk about it. Pronouns take the place of nouns, both common and proper. They (“they” is a pronoun taking the place of the word “pronouns” 😉 get used a lot in longer sentences, but also in sentences that refer to the same person, thing, topic or idea.
In the sentence below, the nouns can be written as common nouns, proper nouns and pronouns:
- The women met at the park for their walk. (“women” is a common noun because it is general)
- Maria and Sonali met at the park for their walk. (Maria and Sonali are proper nouns because they are specific about which women)
- They met at the park for their walk. (“They”is a pronoun because it is the word that replaces the noun once we know to whom we are referring.)
See a list of types of pronouns and examples here. The same information is available on this handout:
Here you can try it on your own: