**Links to**: [[Sameness]], [[Metalearning]], [[Neologistics]], [[Dialove]], [[Dialogics]], [[E Pointing]], [[Self-reference]], [[Reference]], [[002 Semantic noise]], [[Language-modulating]], [[002.1 Modulations]]. ### [[Pronoun]]s are complex things, perhaps the most dynamic of all linguistic phenomena. They mean something else every second. They are coordinates, but also modulations of existence. Pronouns create [[Sameness]] and [[Equivalence]] relationships in the computation of human beings, and other things. *Reminder note:* ### [[Quine]], from [[On what there is]]: >“Up to now I have argued that we can use singular terms significantly in sentences without presupposing that there be the entities which those terms purport to name. I have argued further that we can use general terms, e.g., predicates, without conceding them to be names of abstract entities. I have argued further that we can view utterances as significant, and as synonymous or heteronymous with one another, without countenancing a realm of entities called meanings. At this point [we may wonder] whether there is any limit at all to our ontological immunity. Does _nothing_ we may say commit us to the assumption of universals or other entities which we may find unwelcome? ... I have already suggested a negative answer ... We can very easily involve ourselves in ontological commitments, by saying, e.g., that _there is something_ (bound variable) which red houses and sunsets have in common; or that _there is something_ which is a prime number between 1000 and 1010. But this is, essentially, the only way we can involve ourselves in ontological commitments: by our use of bound variables. ... The use of alleged names is no criterion ... [their namehood can be dropped] unless the assumption of a corresponding entity can be spotted in the things we affirm in terms of bound variables. ... **Whatever we say with the help of names can be said in a language which shuns names altogether. [as was shown by how Pegasus can be converted into a verb, _pegasize_. All things can be converted into verbs in such a way as to avoid names] To be is, purely and simply, to be the value of a variable. ... In terms of the categories of traditional grammar, this amounts roughly to saying that to be is to be in the range of reference to a pronoun. Pronouns are the basic media of reference; nouns might better have been named pro-pronouns.**” (pp. 31-2).