Pro-form


In linguistics, a pro-form is a type of function word or expression that stands in for another word, phrase, clause or sentence where the meaning is recoverable from the context. They are used either to avoid repetitive expressions or in quantification.
Pro-forms are divided into several categories, according to which part of speech they substitute:
An interrogative pro-form is a pro-form that denotes the item in question and may itself fall into any of the above categories.
The rules governing allowable syntactic relations between certain pro-forms and their antecedents have been studied in what is called binding theory.

Table of correlatives

, the inventor of Esperanto, called a table of systematic interrogative, demonstrative, and quantifier pro-forms and determiners in a language a table of correlatives, after the relative and demonstrative proforms, which function together as correlatives. The table of correlatives for English follows.
Some languages may have more categories. See demonstrative.
Note that some categories are regular and some are not. They may be regular or irregular also depending on languages. The following chart shows comparison between English, French and Japanese :
Some languages do not distinguish interrogative and indefinite pro-forms. In Mandarin, "Shéi yǒu wèntí?" means either "Who has a question?" or "Does anyone have a question?", depending on context.