Catalan personal pronouns


This article discusses the forms and functions of the personal pronouns in Catalan and Valencian.

Strong pronouns

The "strong" pronouns in Catalan have the following forms:
These forms are used as subject pronouns, and also as disjunctive pronouns, for example, after a preposition.
  • Jo encara no en sé gaire.
  • Ell, no crec que vingui.
  • Han preguntat per vosaltres.
The first person singular pronoun has a special form mi after most prepositions.
  • Queda't amb mi.
However, the form jo is used with some prepositions, for example, in segons jo, and in coordinated structures with another noun or pronoun: contra tu i jo.
The third person reflexive pronoun si cannot be used as a subject.
It most commonly appears after a preposition, often reinforced by mateix:
  • Ho va comprar per a si mateix.
  • Ho va comprar per a si mateixa.
  • Ho van comprar per a si mateixos.
  • Ho van comprar per a si mateixes.
The 2nd person polite pronouns are vostè and vostès. They combine with 3rd person verbs.
  • Vostè em faria un favor?
The older form vós can be found in some varieties of Catalan, and in contexts like administrative texts.
The 1st person majestic plural is expressed with the pronoun Nós.
There exists as well an impersonal subject pronoun hom, always used with 3rd person singular verbs, nowadays archaic and only used in writing:
  • ''Hom no es fa monja perquè sí''

Weak pronouns

The weak pronouns are proforms that, as the name indicates, do not carry stress. All are monosyllabic clitics, and all must always appear immediately before or after a verb: they cannot be used on their own or attached to a different element of the sentence. The combination of the verb plus the weak pronoun or pronouns always has a single stressed vowel, that of the verb.

Forms

Weak pronouns in Catalan vary according to:
  1. the person, number, and gender of the antecedent
  2. its syntactic function.
The form of a given pronoun is determined by its position with respect to the verb, and whether it is adjacent to a vowel or a consonant in the verb. There are four possible configurations:
  • reinforced form : used before a verb that begins with a consonant, separated from the verb by a space
  • elided form : used before a verb that begins with a vowel, and separated from it by an apostrophe
  • full form : used after a verb that ends in a consonant, connected to the verb with a hyphen
  • reduced form : used after a verb that ends in a vowel, separated from it by an apostrophe
Not all pronouns have four distinct forms. The following table shows the complete inventory.

Uses

The weak pronouns primarily express complements of the verb.
  • Direct objects
  • Indirect objects
  • Reflexive pronouns
  • The neuter proform ho replaces pronouns such as açò, això, allò, or tot, or even an entire clause.
  • The proform hi replaces adverbial complements such as:
  • The adverbial proform en replaces

Position

The weak pronouns are either proclitic or enclitic.
Enclitic pronouns are used with infinitives, gerunds, and positive imperatives.
  • Pots fer-nos mandonguilles?
  • Veient-ho des de fora, analitzant-ho objectivament
  • Vés-hi i espera'm.
With all other forms of the verb, the weak pronouns are proclitic. This includes, in particular, conjugated verbs and negative imperatives:
  • Ens faràs encara mandonguilles?
  • No m'esperis.
In complex verbal constructions consisting of a conjugated verb and an infinitive or gerund, the pronoun can appear either before the first verb or after the second verb.Els volien atacar. or Volien atacar-los. L'estem escoltant. or ''Estem escoltant-lo.''

Dialectal variation

Use of weak pronouns varies significantly across the Catalan linguistic area.
Northern Catalan and the Balearic dialect do not generally use the reinforced forms.
In the imperative mood in Northern Catalan, the reduced form of the pronoun is replaced by a tonic form. For example, mira'm! in Northern Catalan is rendered as mira-mé!.

Combinations of weak pronouns

When two weak pronouns appear with the same verb, they must appear in a fixed order, as illustrated in the following table:
The two pronouns must be selected from different columns, and furthermore ho cannot combine with en or hi.
All of the combinations allowed in the standard language are given in the following table, which also shows the necessary morpho-phonological and orthographic adjustments. In each cell of the table, the forms are listed in the following order, with the same contextual conditions as explained above for the simple pronouns:
Weak pronoun cluster forms
before a word that starts with a consonant
before a word that starts with a vowel '
after a non-finite verb that ends in a consonant or -u
after a non-finite verb that ends in a vowel other than -u '

In combinations like es + en, the resulting form, pronounced, could be analyzed either as s' + en or as se + 'n. The orthographic convention in such cases is to place the apostrophe as far to the right as possible: se'n, and not s'en, and similarly for se'ls, me'n, te'm, te'ns, etc. The combination of el/''la with en, however, is written l'en, because there is no such pronoun as le that would justify the spelling le'n''.

Impossible combinations

As mentioned above, the combinations ho + hi and ho + en are not allowed in the standard language, and must be avoided, for example by keeping only ho and leaving the other pronoun unexpressed. In some contexts, it is also acceptable to replace ho with el, giving rise to the following combinations:
  • ho + hi → el + hi → l'hi
  • ho + en → el + en → l'en
In the second case, it is also possible to replace the pronoun en with hi:
  • ho + en → el + hi → l'hi
This substitution of hi for en is also used to express the combination of en + en, since the form *ne'n is not allowed:
  • en + en → en + hi → 'n'hi'''''

Longer combinations

Sequences of three pronouns are possible, and generally consist of one of the two-pronoun combinations from the table above, preceded by em, et, ens, us, and most commonly es.
  • Us posen vi als gots → Us n'hi posen
  • Se t'ofereix cervesa → Se te n'ofereix
Combinations of four pronouns are very rare:
  • Se'm posa pols a les sabates → Se me n'hi posa
The linguist Joan Solà presents a progression that culminates in a combination of six weak pronouns:
  • Aquell amic nostre és capaç de posar-se a casa tres parents del senyor Pere → Se te me li n’hi posarà tres

Variants

Combinations of weak pronouns are subject to wide regional and stylistic variation, and in several cases the normative rules presented above do not reflect actual usage.
For example, alongside the transparently derived forms of li + direct object pronoun given in the table above, central Catalan varieties replace li with hi:
  • li + el → el + hi → l'hi
  • li + la → la + hi → la hi
  • li + els → els + hi → els hi
  • li + les → les + hi → les hi
Furthermore, the feminine forms can merge phonetically with the masculine forms, i.e. la hi is pronounced like l'hi and les hi like els hi.
Combinations of li with en and ho can also undergo modification:
  • li + en → en + hi → n'hi
  • li + ho → el + hi → l'hi
In more colloquial registers, the plural indirect object pronoun els is realized as els hi, and this extended form is used instead of all combinations of els followed by a 3rd person direct object pronoun:
  • els + el/''la/els/les/ho → els hi
The elided proclitic forms ens n' and us n' are regularly replaced by the unelided forms ens en and us en before a verb starting with a vowel. For example:
  • Ens en anem, instead of Ens n'anem
  • Us en alegreu, instead of Us n'alegreu''