This paper shows one of the serial attempts to study the present-day English usage from the pedagogical grammar with a desire to improve the short-sighted interpretation of English observed in the teaching of English as a foreign language in Japan.
Pronouns replace nouns, or rather whole noun phrases. Thus, they cannot occur with determiners as the definite article or premodification : *the they (but, the man), *tall they (but, tall men) (Quirk et al. 1972 : 203-4). Strictly, however, 1st person and 2nd person are not replacive : I am thirsty/*John am thirsty ; You are thirsty/*Paul are thirsty.
Pronouns are like nouns in syntactical function in their capacity to follow prepositions, but they differ in their other collocations, in morphology, and in being a closed system.
(i) They have a three-term instead of a two-term case system.
(ii) They have a two-term number system, but morphologically unrelated number forms (Cf. boy-boys).
(iii) Gender is in them to some extent an overt system.
(iv) They are subdivided according to a grammatical category, that of person, not relevant to nouns. (Cf. Strang 1968 : 115-6)