Disjunctive pronoun
A disjunctive pronoun is a stressed form of a personal pronoun reserved for use in isolation or in certain syntactic contexts.
Examples and usage
Disjunctive pronominal forms are typically found in the following contexts. The examples are taken from French, which uses the disjunctive first person singular pronoun moi. The (sometimes colloquial) English translations illustrate similar uses of me as a disjunctive form.
- in syntactically unintegrated disjunct (or "dislocated") positions
- Les autres s'en vont, mais moi, je reste.
- The others are leaving, but me, I'm staying.
- in elliptical constructions(often "sentence fragments") with no verb (e.g. short answers)
- Qui veut du gâteau ? Moi.
- Who wants cake? Me. (cf. "I do")
- Il est plus âgé que moi.
- He is older than me. (cf. "I am")
- in the main clause of a cleft sentence
- C'est moi que vous cherchez.
- It's me that you're looking for.
Disjunctive pronouns are often semantically restricted. For example, in a language with grammatical gender, there may be a tendency to use masculine and feminine disjunctive pronouns primarily for referring to animate entities.
- Si l'on propose une bonne candidate, je voterai pour elle.
- If someone proposes a good candidate, I'll vote for her.
- Si l'on propose une bonne loi, je voterai pour elle.
- If someone proposes a good law, I'll vote for her (it).
"It's me"
In some languages, a personal pronoun has a form called a disjunctive pronoun, which is used when it stands on its own, or with only a
"It is I" developed from the Old and Middle English form "It am I".[1] "It" was used as the complement of "am", but in modern English "it" is the subject.[1]
See also
- English personal pronouns
- French personal pronouns
- Intensive pronoun
- Irish morphology
- Subjective pronoun
- Weak pronoun
- Copula
References
- ^ a b John Collinson Nesfield (1922). English Grammar, Past and Present. Macmillan. p. 155.
- Cardinaletti, Anna; Michal Starke (1999). "The typology of structural deficiency: A case study of the three classes of pronouns". In Henk van Riemsdijk (ed.). Clitics in the Languages of Europe. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 145–233.