ABSTRACT
Pronouns are a limited (‘closed’) set of small words which stand in place of NOUNS or NOUN PHRASES.
In particular they stand for nouns or noun phrases which have already been mentioned or which are so well known to the speaker and the listener that they do not need to be repeated in full. Pronouns are used in the same grammatical contexts as nouns or noun phrases and thus, in German, they change their form to indicate the same grammatical categories as nouns, i.e. case, plural and gender.
