personal pronoun

personal pronoun ► NOUN ▪ each of the pronouns in English (I, you, he, she, it, we, they, me, him, her, us, and them) that show contrasts of person, gender, number, and case.

USAGE I, we, they, he, and she are subjective personal pronouns, which means they are used as the subject of the sentence, often coming before the verb ( she lives in Paris ). Me, us, them, him, and her, on the other hand, are objective personal pronouns, which means that they are used as the object of a verb or preposition ( John hates me ). This explains why it is incorrect to say John and me went to the shops : the personal pronoun is in subject position, so it must be I. Where a personal pronoun is used alone, however, the traditional analysis starts to break down. It is sometimes claimed that statements such as she's younger than me and I've not been here as long as her are incorrect and that the correct forms are she's younger than I and I've not been here as long as she . This is based on the assumption that than and as are conjunctions and so the personal pronoun is still subjective even though there is no verb (in full form it would be she's younger than I am ). Yet for most native speakers the supposed ‘correct’ form sounds stilted and is almost never used. It would perhaps be more accurate to say that objective personal pronouns are now used in all cases where the pronoun is not explicitly subjective, and it is therefore acceptable to say she's taller than him and I didn't do as well as her .