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Pronouns may be divided into substantive and adjective, personal and impersonal, relative and interrogative. The personal substantive pronouns are I, thou, he, she. The impersonal substantive pronoun is it.

The personal substantive pronouns have three cases, and are thus declined:

First Person, Masc. and Fem. Sing. Plur. Nom. I[28] We Gen. Mine Ours Obj. Me Us. Second Person, Masc. and Fem. Sing. Plur. Nom. Thou[29] Ye or you Gen. Thine Yours Obj. Thee You. Third Person. Masc. Nom. He[30] They Gen. His Theirs Obj. Him Them. Fem. Sing. Plur. Nom. She[31] They Gen. Hers Theirs Obj. Her Them. Third Person. Neuter. Impersonal. Nom. It[32] They[33] Gen. Its Theirs Obj. It Them.

My, thy, our, your, their, being the representatives of nouns, have the essential character of pronouns. Thus, when Decius says to Cato, “Cæsar is well acquainted with your virtues,” the pronoun is employed as a substitute for Cato’s. As they express not only the subject, but also the relation of property or possession, they are by some grammarians considered to be the genitives of their respective substantive pronouns. In usage, however, they are distinguished from the English genitive by their incapacity to stand alone. Thus we say, “It is the king’s,” “It is yours;” but we cannot say, “It is your,” the presence of a noun being necessary to the last expression. They are, therefore, more correctly named pronominal adjectives. For the purpose of denoting emphatically the relation of possession or property, the word own is frequently joined to them, as, my own, thy own, our own. And to mark the person with emphasis, they are compounded with the word self; in Saxon, sylf; from the Gothic silba, ipse: thus, myself, thyself; ourselves, yourselves. Theirselves is now obsolete, themselves being used in its stead.