Proto-Indo-European pronouns

Proto-Indo-European pronouns have been reconstructed by modern linguists, based on similarities found across all Indo-European languages. This article lists and discusses the hypothesised forms.

PIE pronouns, especially demonstrative pronouns, are difficult to reconstruct because of their variety in later languages.

PIE pronouns inflected for case and number, and partly for gender. For more information on these categories, see the article on Proto-Indo-European nominals.

PIE had personal pronouns in the first and second person, but not the third person, where demonstratives were used instead. They were inflected for case and number (singular, dual, and plural). The personal pronouns had their own unique forms and endings, and some had two distinct stems; this is most obvious in the first person singular, where the two stems are still preserved, as for instance in English I and me. There were also two varieties for the accusative, genitive and dative cases, a stressed and an enclitic form. Many of the special pronominal endings were later borrowed as nominal endings.

The following tables give the paradigms as reconstructed by Beekes and by Sihler.

Other reconstructions typically differ only slightly from Beekes and Sihler (see for example Fortson 2004).

As for demonstratives, Beekes tentatively reconstructs a system with only two pronouns: *so "this, that" and *h₁e "the (just named)" (anaphoric, reconstructed as *ei- by Fortson). He gives the following paradigms:

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