Pronoun

Base class for pronouns. We represent each type of pronoun with an object, to abstract pronouns away from the vocabulary.

The base library defines a set of pronouns that are common to most languages: It, Him, Her, Them, You, Y'all, Me, and Us, plus reflexive forms of It, Him, Her, and Them. Some languages might not employ all of these (French, for example, has no neuter gender, so there's no equivalent of It), and some might need additional pronouns (e.g., French needs a feminine third-person plural). If a pronoun we define here has no equivalent in a given language, the language module should simply omit any grammar mentioning it. If the language has pronouns that aren't in the basic set, the language module can provide definitions for its own additional Pronoun objects, along with the corresponding grammar rules.

The library itself only directly references one pronoun object: You. The parser specifically references this pronoun because it binds to the addressee of a command, which has a special role in the parsing process. Apart from You, though, the library's use of pronouns is directed by the grammar: if a given Pronoun doesn't appear in the grammar anywhere, the library will never use it. (Other than in iterations over Pronoun instances, anyway; but these will be harmless because the parser is just trying to be inclusive.) This means that language modules are free to ignore pronouns (other than You) from the standard set when they're not a good match for the language's needs. For example, if you need distinct Animate and Inanimate forms of Him and Her, you could simply define four new Pronoun objects for these forms, and use them in place of Him and Her throughout your grammar.

Note that these objects are NOT grammar rules or dictionary words. These are abstract objects representing the "binding" of the pronouns - basically the set of grammatical attributes (gender, number) that determine whether a given noun phrase is a valid antecedent for a given pronoun. That's why we don't define separate Pronoun objects the different grammatical cases (nominative, accusative, dative, etc): case is a feature of the grammar, and we're one step removed from that here.

Modified in english.t[2226]:
Modifications to Pronoun to ensure that aName, theName and theObjName return the appropriate results.

class Pronoun : object

Resolve the pronoun during parsing. The usual way of doing this is to return the list of antecedents we store as part of the pronoun object. This lets each type of pronoun store an appropriate list of antecedents.

For a reflexive pronoun, return the Pronoun object for the ordinary form of the pronoun. This tells the parser that it needs to find a match for the pronoun within the command itself, rather than looking for an external antecedent. Second person is inherently reflexive, in that it refers to the addressee(s), so this should return 'self' for a second-person pronoun.

Set the antecedent(s) for future pronoun usage based on the objects mentioned in the current command input or narrative output. 'obj' can be a single antecedent object, or it can be a list. Even a singular pronoun can have a list of antecedents: some commands have more than one noun phrase, and there's no way of knowing which one the user might want to refer to with a pronoun in a future command. We can't know until we see the context of the future pronoun use. For example, UNLOCK DOOR WITH KEY could be followed by OPEN IT, in which case IT is probably the door; or by DROP IT, in which case IT is probably the key. The best thing to do is to save both the door and the key as possible antecedents, so that we can choose the most suitable object when we actually see a pronoun in a subsequent command.