Pronoun

A pronoun is a member of a grammatical category whose uses commonly occupy nominal positions while their interpretation is recovered from context. A previous noun phrase can supply that context, but is not required: I can identify the current speaker without repeating an earlier name.^[ref]

Consider The robot moved beside the box. It stopped. Under a stipulated reading where both objects are possible referents, the spelling it alone does not select one. Grammatical number and syntax can constrain the possibilities while leaving a contextual decision unresolved. The category of the expression and the identity of its referent are distinct annotation questions.

The border with determiners also depends on the adopted scheme. Universal Dependencies documents PRON and DET using characteristic distribution and language-specific conventions. An explicit inventory helps compare text corpus annotations without assuming that a familiar label always covers exactly the same words in every language.