Prepositional pronoun

A prepositional pronoun is a special form of a personal pronoun that is used as the object of a preposition.

English does not have distinct prepositional forms of pronouns. The same set of objective pronouns are used after verbs and prepositions (e.g. "watch him", "look at him"). In some other languages, a special set of pronouns is required in prepositional contexts (although the individual pronouns in this set may also be found in other contexts).

Inflectional forms in Romance

In the Romance languages, prepositions combine with stressed pronominal forms that are distinct from the unstressed clitic pronouns used with verbs. In French, prepositions combine with disjunctive pronouns, which are also found in other syntactic contexts (see French disjunctive pronouns). In Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Romanian, prepositions generally combine with pronouns that are identical in form to nominative (subject) pronouns, but there are unique prepositional forms for the 1st and 2nd person singular (and 3rd person reflexive). This is also true in Catalan, but the 2nd person singular prepositional form is identical to the nominative.

Consider the Portuguese sentences below:

:"Vejo-te todos os dias." (enclitic object of verb):"I see you every day."

:"Não te culpo." (proclitic object of verb):"I don't blame you."

:"Anseio por ti." (prepositional pronoun):"I long for you."

The verbs "ver" "to see" and "culpar" "to blame" in the first two sentences are non-prepositional, so they are accompanied by the normal objective pronoun "te" "you". In the third sentence, the verb "ansiar (por)" "to long (for)" is prepositional, so its object, which follows the preposition, takes the form "ti".

In Esperanto, a heavily romance influenced language, prepositional pronouns always take the nominative (subject) form.

:"Mi amas shin." (direct object of verb):"I love her."

:"Mi atendis por shi." (subjective form of pronoun following preposition):"I waited for her."

Prefixed forms in Slavic

In many Slavic languages (e.g. Czech, Polish, and Russian), prepositional pronouns have the same basic case-inflected forms as pronouns in other syntactic contexts. However, the 3rd person non-reflexive pronouns (which are vowel- or glide-initial) take the prefix "n-" when they are the object of a preposition. The following examples are from Russian: :Я его не вижу. ("I him-GEN NEG see" = "I don't see him."):Я это сделаю для него. ("I this do for him-GEN" = "I will do this for him.")

References

* [http://www.orbilat.com/Languages/Portuguese/Grammar/Portuguese-Pronouns.html#Personal_Pronouns Personal pronouns of Portuguese at Orbis Latinus]
* [http://www.sonia-portuguese.com/text/pronouns.htm#Prepositional%20Pronouns Portuguese prepositional pronouns] (an overview)

ee also

* Prepositional case
* Portuguese pronouns
* Spanish pronouns
* French personal pronouns

External links

* [http://www.orbilat.com/Linguistics_Comparative/Function_Words/Origin_of_the_Pronouns.html Origin of the Pronouns, Pronominal Adjectives and Pronominal Adverbs in the Modern Romance Languages, at Orbis Latinus]