The Pronoun

OE pronouns fell under the same main classes as modern pronouns: personal, demonstrative, interrogative and indefinite. As for the other groups - possessive, reflexive, relative - they were not fully developed. The grammatical categories of the pronouns were either similar to those of nouns, or corresponded to those of adjectives. Some features of pronouns were peculiar to them alone.

A. Personal Pronouns

The personal pronouns of the first person, ic and of the second, pu, have three numbers: singular, plural and dual. Thus wit means ‘we two’, git ‘you two’.

Like their parallels in other IE languages the pronouns of the 1^st and 2^nd person have suppletive forms. This suppletivity confirms the fact that they belong to the most ancient layer of the language. All of them decline alike.

In the old English period pronouns began to lose some of their case distinctions. The Dative case of the pronouns of the 1^st and 2^nd person was frequently used instead of the Accusative. The ponouns revealed the tendency to generalise the form of the Dative for the both cases.

As there was no dual verb form, dual pronouns agreed with plural verbs. The distinction between the dual and the plural was disappearing from the pronoun in OE [Viney, 2008].

Notes:

· The personal pronouns of the 3^rd, having originated from the demonstrative pronouns, have many affinities with the latter. They decline in a similar way.

· The pronouns of the 3^rd person have gender distinctions in the singular. The plural forms are identical for all genders.

Notes:

· There is no separate genitive for it, and no third-person plural th-forms (ancestors of they, etc.). These, along with she, are later developments. There is already considerable ambiguity: the feminine singular and all plurals show extensive overlap [Hogg, 2006].

· Historically the forms they, their, and them are of Scandinavian origin (from the Viking invasions and settlement in northeastern England during the Danelaw period from the 9th to the 11th centuries).

· The third person plural form ’em is believed to be a survival of the late Old English form heom, which appears as hem in Chaucer, and has apparently lost its aspiration due to being used as an unstressed form [Freeborn, 1998].

· The oblique cases of personal pronouns in combination with the adjective ‘self’ could also serve as reflexive pronouns: him selfum (himself).

Date: 2014-12-22; view: 1319