Italian 3rd person pronouns - English version

Have you just come across lui, lei and loro so far and are now confronted with egli, ella, essi and esse?  Here is an overview of when to use which forms.

Egli and ella are the [+nominative] forms, lui and lei are the [-nominative] i.e. genitive, dative and accusative forms. (Same goes for essi (masculine) and esse (feminine) vs. loro). The [-nominative] forms can be used to refer to the subject of a sentence when

a. the subject is also theme (topic), that is, when you could also say per quanto riguarda lui/lei (which occurs mostly when the subject is accompanied by anche, ancora, proprio, perfino, nemmeno / neanche /neppure, stesso/medesimo

• Example: anche lui ('also him' -> him as well) = anche per quanto riguarda lui  ('also for what regards him' -> also as far as he is concerned), so lui can be used.

By the way, Alessandro Manzoni was the first one to “legalise” this particular use of the [-nominative] forms by using anche lui in I Promessi Sposi:

“(…) l’Innominato passò; e davanti alla porta spalancata della chiesa, si levò il cappello e chinò quella fronte tanta temuta, fin sulla criniera della mula… Don Abbondio si levò anche lui il cappello, si chinò, si raccomandò al cielo.”

Excerpt taken from: Diadori, Pierangela: The translation of gestures in the English and German versions of Manzoni's / Promessi Sposi (S. 131ff.) In: Fernando Poyatos ed. (1997) Nonverbal Communication and Translation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins.

b. the subject is also rheme (comment), which is when it comes after the verb (or would come after the verb if the verb hadn't been omitted, as it occurs in ellipses like beato lui [beato è lui - 'blessed is he' -> he's a lucky bastard]).

• Example with verb: me l'ha detto lui ('me it has told he [-nom]' -> it was him/he who told me).

When the subject is neither theme nor rheme, the nominative forms are obligatory (ella sounds so old-fashioned, though, that it is often substituted by lei in these cases as well). In these situations, however, the pronouns can often be omitted (as Italian is a pro-drop language) or when it is necessary to explicitly refer to the subject (e.g. for avoiding ambiguity), names are preferred over pronouns. This is why, as many Italians will tell you, you don't really encounter the nominative forms except when conjugating verbs.

One last thing: egli (lui) and ella (lei) may only  be used to refer to persons and personified subjects (or objects) - for all other kinds of referents you have to use esso (masculine) or essa (feminine). Likewise, as far as I know, subjects or objects that are neither persons nor personified may not be referred to as loro but only as essi (masculine) or esse (feminine).

Source (the best you can get for grammar questions): http://www.accademiadellacrusca.it/.../domande.../soggetto