pronombre

Forms

pronombre m (plural pronombres)^[1] Fifteenth-century texts spell it prononbre.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin prōnōmen (“pronoun”), with its second part made to match nombre.^[3][4][1] The Latin word is formed of prō (“instead of”) and nōmen (“name; noun”), and was coined as a calque of Ancient Greek ἀντωνυμία (antōnumía, “pronoun”).^[1][5][6] The DLE also calls the Latin term a calque of the Greek one.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest record in the CDH is in Alfonso de la Torre's Visión deleitable (c. 1430–1440, in a 15th-century copy), which speaks of the kinds of nouns, verbs, participles and prononbres.^[2] Corominas dates the word to 1490.^[4][7] Alfonso de Cartagena's Oracional (before 1456) lists nonbre e prononbre among the eight parts of speech.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Covarrubias (1611) defined it as a part of speech put in place of the noun, such as yo, tú and aquel.^[8] Autoridades (1737) divided pronouns into personal, relative, possessive and demonstrative.^[9] From 1869 the Academy listed the classes as phrases (pronombre demostrativo, indeterminado, posesivo, personal), and in 1899 it added that a pronoun may also determine the noun.^[10][11] The current DLE defines it as a word class that stands for a noun or noun phrase, and also each member of that class.^[3]

A late 15th-century charter uses propio prononbre for a person's own name.^[2] In the Americas a grammar printed in Mexico City in 1571 already speaks of pronombres redoblados.^[12]

Timeline

• c. 1430–1440 – first record, as prononbre, in Alfonso de la Torre's Visión deleitable.^[2]
• 1490 – date of first record given by Corominas.^[4]
• 1492 – Nebrija's Gramática castellana uses the word.^[13]
• 1571 – first record from the Americas, in Mexico City.^[12]
• 1611 – Covarrubias explains it as the word put in place of the noun.^[8]
• 1737 – Autoridades names four kinds of pronouns.^[9]
• 1884 – the Academy's dictionary gives the etymology from Latin pronomen.^[14]

Meanings

Noun

1. (grammar) pronoun: the word class whose members stand for a noun or noun phrase and refer to people, animals or things without naming them.^[3][1]
2. (grammar) Each word of that class: «Nosotros» es un pronombre personal.^[3][15]

Related words

• nombre
• pronominal
• Latin prōnōmen

Usage notes

Traditional grammars distinguish the pronombre adjetivo, which determines a noun, and the DLE lists phrases such as pronombre demostrativo, personal, posesivo and relativo.^[3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. pronombre
3. ^ a b c d e f Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. pronombre
4. ^ a b c Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. nombre
5. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. s.v. prōnōmen
6. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 575
7. ^ Segura Munguía, Santiago (2014), Lexicón etimológico y semántico del latín y de las voces actuales que proceden de raíces latinas o griegas, Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto, p. 485
8. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1232
9. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 401
10. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 636
11. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 816
12. ^ a b Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. pronombre
13. ^ Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org, p. s.v. pronombre
14. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 870
15. ^ Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. pronombre