NOUNS: As you recall from before, the part of speech called nouns encompasses thousands of words used to name persons, places, things, living creatures, and ideas. Because nouns identify the persons, places, things, living creatures, and ideas in our environment, this part of speech often provides subjects for sentences. Nouns do an excellent job of acting out the answer to the who/what question used to identify the subject of a sentence.
PRONOUNS: Pronouns, which you studied in Unit 2, can also act as subjects because they stand in for nouns. The types of pronouns that can function as subjects include personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, interrogative pronouns, and indefinite pronouns. Personal Pronoun
We quickly ate the caramel gelato.
Demonstrative Pronoun
Those are the shoes from the store.
Interrogative Pronoun
Who told you that story?
Indefinite Pronoun
Everyone enjoys writing well.
Another type of pronoun, the relative pronoun, can function as a subject in subordinate clauses, which you will study in the next section.
PERSONAL PRONOUNS have distinct characteristics, including number, person, gender, and case. They also have the characteristic of being part of a closed group. In other words, no changes or additions will be made to this group. The pronouns I, you, he, she, it, we, and they are all of the personal pronouns that act as subjects. 1. Number: This term simply means singular (I, he, she) or plural (we, they). In other words, if the noun being represented is singular, choose a singular pronoun. If the noun(s) being represented is plural, choose a plural pronoun. 2. Person: This term refers to your point of view. You use 1st person when you are speaking (I, we); you use 2nd person when you are speaking directly to the reader (you); you use 3rd person when you are speaking about someone or something else (he, she, it, they). 3. Gender: This term identifies whether the pronoun represents a subject that is male (he), female (she), or neuter (it). 4. Case: This term refers to the two distinct case classifications of personal pronouns. Case determines how the pronoun is to be used. Subjective case means that the pronoun can be used as a subject in a sentence. (Objective case means the pronoun can be used as a direct object or other object field.) 29