Pronouns and Determiners

Pronouns and determiners are small words that do a lot of sentence work.

This chapter treats them as tables, not as suffix rules.

A pronoun stands in for a noun phrase, as hon stands for a person. A determiner comes before a noun and limits its reference, as min does in min bok.

Which forms should you memorize instead of generating?

Informal spellings such as mej, dej, sej, and dom are variants. Learn the standard form first.

A reflexive object points back to the subject. Third-person subjects use sig; first and second person reuse their ordinary object forms.

The spelling sej is common informally, but sig is the standard written form.

Use this row when talking about people in general rather than a named person:

Here man is a generic pronoun, not the noun en man meaning "a man."

In ordinary modern speech, both standard written forms de and dem are usually pronounced like dom. Use de for the subject and dem for the object in formal writing; dom is a common informal spelling for either. Listen to complete examples rather than trying to pronounce the written vowels literally.

Possessives agree with the thing possessed:

Examples:

Note that er does double duty: it is the object form of ni ("you plural") and also the possessive "your". Context decides: Jag ser er. (I see you) versus er bil (your car). The possessive er also agrees: er bil, ert hus, era böcker.

Invariant possessives do not change:

sin/sitt/sina refers back to the subject, but agrees with the possessed noun:

Store these as small paradigms:

Interrogative forms ask questions. Relative forms connect a noun to a clause that describes it.

som and vars do not change for gender or number. Store the vilken row as a small agreement table: