French Grammar - Pronouns

Pronouns

In French, pronouns can be inflected to indicate their role in a clause (subject, direct object, etc.), as well as the person, gender, and number of their referent. Not all of these inflections may be present at once; for example, the relative pronoun que (that, which, whom) may have any referent, while the possessive pronoun le mien (mine) may have any role in a clause.

As noted above, French — like English — is a non-pro-drop ("pronoun-dropping") language; therefore, pronouns feature prominently in the language. Impersonal verbs (e.g., pleuvoir — to rain) use the impersonal pronoun il (analogous to English it).

The French object pronouns are all clitics, and some appear so consistently — especially in everyday speech — that some have commented that French could almost be considered to demonstrate polypersonal agreement.