English has a large number of pronouns: words standing for (pro) nouns. Some of these words serve to clarify the communication situation: "I" refers to the speaker, "you" refers to the person or persons spoken to, and all other pronouns refer to persons or things outside this intimate group. Thus, "I see you" refers to just the speaker-audience group, while "I see him," although spoken to an audience, refers to someone else, not the audience being addressed. In talking about grammar, we refer to these three basic roles in the communication situation as
the first person (speaker)
the second person (hearer)
the third person (spoken about, outside of speaker and hearer)
Like nouns, pronouns have different forms for singular and plural as well as a special form for the possessive, but unlike nouns, some pronouns also have one form when used as a subject and another when used as an object.
Subject Pronouns: Singular / Plural
First Person: I / we
Second Person: you / you
Third person: he, she, it / they
Object Pronouns: Singular / Plural
First Person: me, myself / us, ourselves
Second Person: you, yourself / you, yourselves
Third person: him, himself, her, herself, it, itself / them, themselves
Possessive Pronouns: Singular / Plural
First Person: mine / ours
Second Person: yours
Third person: his, hers, its / theirs
For completeness, we must also include the forms that these pronouns take when used as adjectives, to modify a noun. Thus "theirs" is used as a pronoun in "This car is theirs," but "their" is used as an adjective in "This is their car."
Possessive Adjectival Pronouns: Singular / Plural
First Person: my / our
Second Person: your
Third person: his, her, its / their