Editing Pronoun (section)

=== Grammar ===
Pronouns ({{Lang|grc-Latn|antōnymía}}) are listed as one of [[Part of speech#Western tradition|eight parts of speech]] in ''[[The Art of Grammar]]'', a treatise on Greek grammar attributed to [[Dionysius Thrax]] and dating from the 2nd century BC. The pronoun is described there as "a part of speech substitutable for a noun and marked for a person." Pronouns continued to be regarded as a part of speech in [[Latin]] grammar (the Latin term being {{lang|la|pronomen}}, from which the English name – through [[Middle French]] – ultimately derives), and thus in the European tradition generally.

Because of the many different syntactic roles that they play, pronouns are less likely to be a single [[word class]] in more modern approaches to grammar.<ref>For example, Vulf Plotkin (''The Language System of English'', Universal Publishers, 2006, pp. 82–83) writes: "[...] Pronouns exemplify such a word class, or rather several smaller classes united by an important semantic distinction between them and all the major parts of speech. The latter denote things, phenomena and their properties in the ambient world. [...] Pronouns, on the contrary, do not denote anything, but refer to things, phenomena or properties without involving their peculiar nature."</ref>