Pronouns (from the Latin pronomen ) are a type of word that lacks a fixed referent, since it is determined according to the relationship it establishes with other words already named. A pronoun, therefore, can act as a noun and refer to people, objects or extralinguistic things.
Demonstrative pronouns are those that fulfill a deictic or display function ; That is, they allow us to distinguish and name elements that were previously mentioned (without the need to repeat them). These pronouns are classified according to the degree of distance they have from the indicated object.
Types of demonstrative pronouns
First degree demonstrative pronouns indicate a closeness of what is mentioned with respect to the issuer ( "this" , "these" , "this" , "this" , "these" ). For example: "This (car) is parked badly," "This is very delicious," "These (sandals) match your red pants , " "These (books) look very old," "This (tray) was my grandmother" .
Second-degree demonstrative pronouns , on the other hand, express the closeness of what is indicated with respect to the recipient ( "that" , "that" , "that" , "those" , "those" ): "Hand me that, please" , " That (phone) belongs to José" , "I would like to buy one of those (houses)" , "Those (lanterns) provide little light" .
The third degree demonstrative pronouns , finally, denote closeness for the sender and the receiver ( "that" , "that" , "that" , "those" , "those" ): "That (painting) was painted by Monet" , "That (door) is poorly closed" , "Those look used" .
Some considerations
All demonstrative pronouns can be combined with the term "everything" and its variants to form sentences : "All this is very strange" , "All of these are on sale" .
It should be noted that, when the noun is made explicit, the pronoun stops functioning as such and is considered as an adjective : "That is mine" (pronoun), "That notebook is mine" (adjective).
Changes in stress of demonstrative pronouns
Until a few years ago, according to the spelling rules of accentuation, both the adverb "only" and the demonstrative pronouns had to have an accent to distinguish them from the adjective "only" and the demonstrative determiners, respectively, to avoid possible confusion within the same context. .
Let's take the following sentence to present an example in which the absence of the accent can generate ambiguity:
"I study only on Mondays and Thursdays." In this case, the word "only" has the same meaning and the same function as "only"; It is an adverb and had an accent to prevent the sentence from being interpreted as that whoever states it studies alone , without company, on Mondays and Thursdays, which would also imply that the rest of the days he studies together with other people. In summary, the use of the accent , previously mandatory, helps considerably to avoid erroneous interpretations.
Moving on to the demonstrative pronouns, a situation similar to the previous one can be seen in the following sentence:
"Where do these old books buy?" . Here the confusion can be even greater, since this is an example that depends largely on intonation to be understood correctly. The word "these" is the subject of the sentence, and thanks to the accent it is clear that it is not an adjective that modifies "old books"; In short, the question tries to find out "where do these guys buy old books" and not, "where do they buy these old books."
Recently, the Royal Spanish Academy published an article in which it recommends leaving the accent out of use in the cases mentioned, relying on the rules of accentuation, since the majority of pronouns are plain words ending in a vowel or in s (just like solo ), and on the other hand there is the case of That , an acute word ending in l . Following, therefore, the classic rules that so many of us sing as children, we must ignore semantics and, to avoid incurring an offense before the language authorities, leave the task of reading between the lines in the hands of the readers to properly interpret our texts.