Introduction

Despite their name, personal pronouns do not always stand for persons. Indeed only the 1st and 2nd person pronouns do: they stand for the two persons of the discourse. The 3rd person pronoun can stand for a person outside the discourse situation, or indeed an animal, a thing, a concept, etc. Syntactically, the 3rd person pronoun can replace a noun, an adjective or even a whole clause.

The 1st and 2nd persons

The 1st and 2nd persons singular are deictic personal pronouns (pronoms personnels déictiques). They designate:

1. – who is talking

2. – who is being talked to

i.e. the actants of the communication: je and tu. In other words, they designate in turn the speaker and his/her interlocutor.

Ex: Paul: Je sais que tu n'étais pas chez toi hier.

Marie: Je t'assure que tu te trompes!

Indeed, je and tu can only be identified in the discourse situation. They behave like provisional proper nouns which are interchangeable in that the person who says je as the speaker will be adressed as tu when his/her interlocutor speaks to address him/her.

In a written text, the reader can identify the referent of the pronoun je from the context. However, je is still not a representative pronoun. In a question, a statement or a monologue, je designates its referent directly, i.e. the person who speaks here and now ‘before us’.