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The development of personal pronouns in the history of English.




Personal Pronouns possessed (and still do) a very vivid Indo-European feature – suppletivity (i.e. they build their forms with the help of different roots (see also Lecture 4)).

Personal pronouns in OE changed in Gender, Number, Case, Person:

Pers. Case Number  
Singular Plural Dual  
1st Nom ic wit  
Gen min ūre uncer  
Dat ūs unc  
Acc mec/mē ūsic uncit  
2nd Nom þu* ζē* ζit  
Gen þin ēower incer  
Dat þe ēow* inc  
Acc þec/þe ēowic incit  
Pers. Case Gender, Number
M, Sg F, Sg N, Sg Plural
3rd Nom hē* hēo/hīo* hit* hēo/hīe*
Gen his hire his hira
Dat him hire him him
Acc hine hīe hit hēo/hīe
                 

 

Later the following changes happened to the personal pronouns (some of them are marked with * in the table above so that one can trace the connection easily):

1. Gender is still preserved (he, she, it) in ModE but is often denied by scholars because it is expressed lexically and practically has nothing to do with grammar.

2. Cases: -In ME the Genitive Case turned into a new class of pronouns – Possessive Pronouns (e.g. ModE I (pers.) – mine (possess.); you – yours, he – his, she – her, etc.); -The Dative and the Accusative Cases fell together and formed the Objective Case. Thus in ME there were only two cases left in the personal pronouns – Nominative and Objective (e.g. ModE I (Nom) – me (Obj); he – him, she – her, etc.).

3. Number.Dual forms disappeared in ME. In NE the category of Number disappeared in the 2nd person of the personal pronouns (see the explanation below).

4. 3rd person.As far as in the Early ME many forms in the 3rd person coincided phonetically and often caused confusion and difficulties in communication, the following changes occurred:

Pers. Gender OE Early ME Late ME Comments
3rd M, Sg à he à he preserved original form
F, Sg hēo/hīo à he à she As far as it coincided with M, Sg and Plural forms, a new word was found – derived from the demonstrative pronoun sēo (F, Sg, Nom) – to distinguish the forms.
N, Sg hit à hit à it preserved original form, lost initial [h]
Plural hēo/hīe à he/hi à they As far as it coincided with M, Sg and F, Sg forms, a new word was found – a Scandinavian borrowing – to distinguish the forms.

 

Pers. Number OE ME Comments NE
2nd Sg þu à thouà Fell out of use due to the French etiquette (it forbade impolite “thou” form, so it was replaced with the polite “ēow” form). ēow (Pl, Dat)(you)
Pl ζē à ye à Coincided phonetically with à was dropped

 

T hus in NE the category of Number disappeared in the 2nd person of the personal pronouns.

The Development of the Adjective


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