Contents Introduction The development of personal pronouns in English

Internet sources
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_pronouns
2. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/demonstrative_pronoun
3.
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/416931.William_Arthur_Ward

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4.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/lizlange/2012/02/28/you-have-brains-in-your-
head-you-havefeet-in-your-shoes-you-can-steer-yourself-in-any-direction-you-
choose-youre-on-your-ownand-you-know-what-you-know-you-are-the-guy-
wholl-decide-where-to-go/#23a9184a4023

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Document Outline

• 1. The development of personal pronouns in English…………………………..5
• 2. Development of possessive pronouns………………………………………...15
• 3. Development of demonstrative pronouns…………………………………...17
• 4. Development of interrogative, indefinite, negative and indefinite personal, relative pronouns………………………………………………………………...23
• 5. Formation of the article………………………………………………………25
• Conclusion………………………………………………………………………..28
• Bibliography……………………………………………………………………...30
• Personal pronouns in Old English period
• Personal pronouns in Middle English period
• Personal pronouns in the New English period
• 2. Development of possessive pronouns
• Possessive pronouns in the Old English period
• Possessive pronouns come from the genitive form of personal pronouns. The pronouns of the first two persons of both numbers are declined according to the strong declension of adjectives: mīnem, mīnus, mīnne. Possessive pronouns of the 3rd l. both numbers are not declined. But there is also the pronoun sīn 'one's own', which is also inclined according to the strong type and is used as a possessive pronoun of the 3rd letter.
• Possessive pronouns in the Middle English period
• Possessive pronouns are still closely related to the category of personal pronouns both in terms of their root composition and the presence in them of a category of person that is not represented in any other pronominal categories.
• Possessive pronouns in Middle English undergo in almost all cases the same changes as personal ones. So, in the pronoun of the 3rd l. pl. h. appears in the north form their; in the center in the 14th century. the old pronoun here is still used; in the 15th century in London documents theirs appears, and by the 16th century. here disappears. The same should be said about the origin of their as about the object case of the personal pronoun: the spelling reflects the Scandinavian form đeirra, but phonetically it could also develop from the Old English genitive case of the demonstrative pronoun đ1rra. The spellings their and there are found in various monuments before the 16th century, sometimes in the same monument, for example, in Cursor Mundi. Their is more common in the northern monuments, there in the central and southern ones; it is possible that the spelling their of the two existing variants was fixed because the spelling there was already assigned to the homonym-adverb. But this means that one can speak with confidence about borrowing their only in relation to spelling, but not sound.
• In the possessive pronoun eower, parallel to eow, an ascending diphthong appears: your. Possessive pronouns of the 3rd l. masculine and feminine retain their old forms to our time.
• There is a new use of possessive pronouns in Middle English, in which they do not occupy the usual position of a prepositional noun. This is the position in which the possessive pronoun is stressed: a freend of his (Chaucer); If yee me oght of yours give (Cursor Mundi) The origin of the forms with - s—ours, yours, hers is not entirely clear. Researchers associate them with the genitive form of nouns. In parallel, ours, yours, etc. are formed, by analogy with mine and thine, forms with -n: ourn, yourn, theirn. These forms are further forced out of the national language by the -s forms, but they are retained in dialects in the south and partly in the center.
• Possessive pronouns in the New England period
• In Early New English, a new form of the 3rd-person possessive pronoun appears. neuter. Along with his, the form it is possible, as well as its, formed, perhaps by analogy with the possessive case of nouns. Shakespeare uses his and it forms:
• How far that little candle throws his beams (Merck, of Ven.); The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long that it had it head bit off by it young (K. Lear).
• The form its was first noted in 1598; in the works of Shakespeare, she appeared only in posthumous editions. In the 17th century there is a spelling with an apostrophe: it's.
• In pronouns of the 1st and 2nd l. mine and thine the nasal consonant is omitted if the next word begins with a consonant but is retained before vowels:
• Then slay, mine enemies and ayde my friends (Marlowe).
• In New English, /n/ is dropped.
• 3. Development of demonstrative pronouns
• Demonstrative pronouns in the Old English period
• There are two groups of demonstrative pronouns in Old English. In one of them, the meaning of pointing is significantly weakened; in the second it is fully manifested. The first group is used more widely and more often than the second.
• Both groups have categories of gender, two numbers and five cases (the fifth case is instrumental).
• The root starting with đ corresponds to Greek to, Russian that; it is also present in the Germanic languages ​​(for example, in German der, die, das).
• The pronouns of this group accompany the noun without expressing indicative; they are very close to the modern definite article, and some linguists consider them to be an article already. But sē, seo, đ1t can be used anaphorically in a sense close to that of personal pronouns. The article cannot replace a noun or function without a noun. Therefore, despite the undoubted proximity of the demonstrative pronouns of the first group to the article, it still seems premature to consider that they already are.
• Anaphoric substitution is especially common in subordinate clauses: secwaef) to anum of his leorning cnihta, se" waes Zepa Philippus "said to one of his students, he called himself Philip." From the point of view of the syntax of modern language, se could be taken as a relative pronoun 'which.' But such an analysis would not take into account the forms of the pronoun, demonstrative in origin. Often, se is combined with the particle pyo (§ 304), which has a relative meaning: sepe - 'that which'. In this case, no doubt, se participates in the transfer relative connection of parts of the sentence
• Demonstrative pronouns in the Middle English period
• The 1st group of demonstrative pronouns breaks up in Middle English. For a short time (until the middle of the 20th century) there are still remnants of the declension -ben, bon in the accusative case; in the future they disappear, and the invariable form the remains, which is the determiner of the noun - the article.
• The neuter nominative form that functions alongside the until the 14th century; further its demonstrative meaning is strengthened and that is fixed in the group of demonstrative pronouns.
• The feminine nominative form, as above, merged with heo to form the feminine personal pronoun
• The plural form is Old English đǎ, from the middle of the 13th century. đo— persists through the Middle English period. The 2nd group of demonstrative pronouns retains inflectional forms during the 11th-12th centuries; in the south they are occasionally found in the 13th century. In the XIII-XIV centuries. there is a generalization of forms; the gender category is lost, and the former neuter form this crowds out the other forms. The plural form đǒs is gradually disappearing. In the south, along with the disappearing form thos, new plural forms thise, these are formed, apparently from the old đīs, đēs. These is fixed as the plural form of this; at the end of the 15th century. the plural form those appears, which, according to Brunner, is hardly a continuation of the old thos, but rather an analogous new formation with the plural ending -s from the form đo (tho).
• The series this—these/that—those is contrasted by the meaning of “proximity/distance”: this indicates close in time (future) or space; that - to more distant in space and to the past in time (this week - the current week; that week - the one that was mentioned in connection with past events).
• In common parlance, the pronoun them has acquired the function of a demonstrative pronoun. It appeared from the 17th century: he should speak them words (Bunyan).
• Demonstrative pronouns in the New English period
• New English develops a modern system of demonstrative pronouns. In Middle English, demonstrative pronouns had different forms: singular. h. this - pl. h. thise, thes(e) this and singular. h. that - pl. h. thǒ - that one. In New English, the Middle English plural form thǒ, by analogy with the plural form of nouns, is appended with -s, apparently to express the meaning of the plural more clearly. Thus, a system of demonstrative pronouns is formed: singular. h. this, that - pl. h. these, those.
• As already mentioned, the accusative case of the Old English personal pronoun (first and second person) had two parallel forms, one of which coincided with the form of the dative case. It was this form that was the most frequent, which made the dative and accusative cases of the first and second person merge into one (which today is called object). In the Middle English period, this phenomenon extended to the third person. Thus, the differences between the dative and accusative cases of all forms of personal pronouns were reduced to zero.
• The genitive case of personal pronouns began to develop as a special type of pronoun. Even in the Old English period, the forms of the genitive of the first and second person received their own declension system, similar to that of adjectives. In fact, this meant the emergence of a new type of pronouns. During the Middle English period, these forms lost all but one function (the designation of belonging), and established themselves in the language as a class of possessive pronouns. Thus, by the XIV century, the system of personal pronouns retained only two cases: general and objective, which are preserved in the language of modernity.
• The Great Vowel Shift also affected the vowel [e:] in the pronouns wē, mē, hē. In accordance with this phenomenon, the long [e:] has changed to [i:].
• The modern you developed from the Old English ēow, the dative case of the pronoun gē.
• Demonstrative pronouns
• In the course of its development in the Middle and New English periods, the demonstrative pronoun has undergone significant changes. Its case system was completely destroyed, and the only differences that have survived to the present state of the language are differences in number: that - those; this - these. (near/long range). A row formed.
• That probably comes from Old English þæt. The origin of the pronoun those is debatable. Scientists consider two sources of its appearance. It could be the result of the development of the plural form þā (OE þā > ME tho > NE those), where the ending -s appeared by analogy with the plural of nouns. It could also have developed from the plural form þās (OE þās > ME those > NE those).
• The pronoun this developed from the Old English neuter pronoun þis; the plural form these most likely emerged as a result of the evolution of the Old English feminine pronoun þēos.
• This observation has led some linguists, such as Paul Postal, to regard pronouns as determiners that have had their following noun or noun phrase deleted.(Such patterning can even be claimed for certain personal pronouns; for example, we and you might be analyzed as determiners in phrases like we Brits and you tennis players.) Other linguists have taken a similar view, uniting pronouns and determiners into a single class, sometimes called "determiner-pronoun", or regarding determiners as a subclass of pronouns or vice versa. The distinction may be considered to be one of subcategorization or valency, rather like the distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs – determiners take a noun phrase complement like transitive verbs do, while pronouns do not. This is consistent with the determiner phrase viewpoint, whereby a determiner, rather than the noun that follows it, is taken to be the head of the phrase. Cross-linguistically, it seems as though pronouns share 3 distinct categories: point of view, person, and number. The breadth of each subcategory however tends to differ among languages
• The use of pronouns often involves anaphora, where the meaning of the pronoun is dependent on another referential element. The referent of the pronoun is often the same as that of a preceding (or sometimes following) noun phrase, called the antecedent of the pronoun. The grammatical behavior of certain types of pronouns, and in particular their possible relationship with their antecedents, has been the focus of studies in binding, notably in the Chomskyan government and binding theory. In this binding context, reflexive and reciprocal pronouns in English (such as himself and each other) are referred to as anaphors (in a specialized restricted sense) rather than as pronominal elements. Under binding theory, specific principles apply to different sets of pronouns.
• In English, reflexive and reciprocal pronouns must adhere to Principle A: an anaphor (reflexive or reciprocal, such as "each other") must be bound in its governing category (roughly, the clause). Therefore, in syntactic structure it must be lower in structure (it must have an antecedent) and have a direct relationship with its referent. This is called a C-command relationship. For instance, we see that John cut himself is grammatical, but Himself cut John is not, despite having identical arguments, since himself, the reflexive, must be lower in structure to John, its referent. Additionally, we see examples like John said that Mary cut himself are not grammatical because there is an intermediary noun, Mary, that disallows the two referents from having a direct relationship.
• On the other hand, personal pronouns (such as him or them) must adhere to Principle B: a pronoun must be free (i.e., not bound) within its governing category (roughly, the clause). This means that although the pronouns can have a referent, they cannot have a direct relationship with the referent where the referent selects the pronoun. For instance, John said Mary cut him is grammatical because the two co-referents, John and him are separated structurally by Mary. This is why a sentence like John cut him where him refers to John is ungrammatical.
• Personal pronouns are those that participate in the grammatical and semantic systems of person (1st, 2nd, & 3rd person). It's not that they refer to people. They typically form definite NPs. The personal pronouns of modern standard English are presented in the table above. They are I, you, she, he, it, we, and they, and their inflected forms. The second-person you forms are used with both singular and plural reference. In the Southern United States, y'all (you all) is used as a plural form, and various other phrases such as you guys are used in other places. An archaic set of second-person pronouns used for singular reference is thou, thee, thyself, thy, thine, which are still used in religious services and can be seen in older works, such as Shakespeare's—in such texts, the you set of pronouns are used for plural reference, or with singular reference as a formal V-form. You can also be used as an indefinite pronoun, referring to a person in general (see generic you), compared to the more formal alternative, one (reflexive oneself, possessive one's). The third-person singular forms are differentiated according to the gender of the referent. For example, she is used to refer to a female person, sometimes a female animal, and sometimes an object to which female characteristics are attributed, such as a ship or a country. A male person, and sometimes a male animal, is referred to using he. In other cases it can be used. (See Gender in English.) The third-person form they is used with both plural and singular referents. Historically, singular they was restricted to quantificational constructions such as Each employee should clean their desk and referential cases where the referent's gender was unknown.
• However, it is increasingly used when the referent's gender is irrelevant or when the referent is neither male nor female. The dependent genitive pronouns, such as my, are used as determinatives together with nouns, as in my old man, some of his friends. The independent genitive forms like mine are used as full noun phrases (e.g., mine is bigger than yours; this one is mine). Note also the construction a friend of mine (meaning "someone who is my friend"). See English possessive for more details.
• 4. Development of interrogative, indefinite,
• negative and indefinite personal, relative pronouns
• Interrogative, indefinite, negative and indefinite personal pronouns in the Old English period
• Interrogative pronouns include masculine and feminine hwa 'who', neuter hw1t 'what', hwylc 'which'. Hwa and hw1t are declined like se and p1t.
• The indefinite ones include sum 'some', 1niZ 'some', which are declined like strong adjectives. In the group of indefinite indefinite generalizing pronouns can be distinguished, such as Zehwǎ 'every', swilc 'such', 1lc 'each', 1Zđer 'one of two'; sē ilca 'the one'. Zehwǎ declines like hwǎ; the rest of the pronouns are inflected in the strong type, with the exception of sē ilca, which is inflected in the weak type.
• The negative pronouns nǎn, n1niZ come from ne + ǎn 'none' and ne + 1niZ 'none'. Both of them are strongly inclined.
• The plural form men 'people' in a collective indefinite meaning can be considered as an indefinite personal pronoun.
• Interrogative, indefinite, negative and indefinite personal pronouns in the Middle English period
• Interrogative pronouns have not undergone any changes other than phonetic ones. In Middle English we find the pronouns who, what, whos(e), whom, which.
• Indefinite and negative pronouns have lost their declension: some, any, non have become invariable; See also each, every. In the Middle English period, the isolation of a group of relative pronouns began, which developed in the New English period to its present state. The demonstrative pronoun đ1t already had a homonym in Old English in the form of the union đ1t, which introduced additional subordinate clauses. In Old English, the demonstrative pronouns sē, sēo, đ1t, đǎ attached adjectives expressed in sentences; in these cases their nature is not clear—whether they are demonstrative pronouns or already relative. But, judging by the fact that in the future they did not retain the function of attaching such sentences, it seems more correct to consider them as demonstrative pronouns, and not relative ones.
• In Middle English, a clear relative pronoun that appears, combining the ability for anaphoric use (inherent in demonstrative pronouns) and the transfer of relative subordination inherent in conjunction. In the XIII century. which takes on the same function. Chaucer also uses which without that.
• Whom and whose also belong to the group of relative pronouns in Middle English; but who joins it only in the 16th century. After the emergence of the relative pronoun who, a delimitation took place, as a result of which who began to refer to the definitive, denoting a person, and which, to the definitive, denoting an object or animal. Who and which compete with that, which can be either of the two types it defines.
• In Old English, the weakened unstressed form man, men, me was used with the meaning of an indefinite personal pronoun. In the Middle English period, men, me continued to be used: Therfore in stede of weping and preyeres, Men moot yve silver to the povre freres (Chaucer) "Therefore, instead of weeping and praying, silver should be given to poor monks."
• At the same time, an indefinite personal pronoun separates from the numeral oon (= one). In Middle English it is used mainly in combinations: everychon= everyone, many one. In the future, it functions independently. The genitive form one's appears in Early New English.
• 5. Formation of the article
• The question of the nature of the article was covered in early English descriptive (pre-normative) grammars of the 16th century. and continues to be actively studied in our time. He outlined the history of the issue in a general form in his dissertation research. Briefly, it boils down to the following. In the XVI - XVIII centuries. the article was considered as a sign of a noun, which stood out among other parts of speech mainly on this basis. At the end of the XVI century. there was another concept, according to which the article was considered as a kind of adjective. In the 17th century, in addition, some grammarians considered the article to be an independent part of speech. In the same period, more particular interpretations were also quite common: the article is a certain property of a noun, the article is a certain determiner, the article is a particle. notes that the terms "definite" and "indefinite" were introduced by J. Howell in 1662 [4]
• In the XVII - XVIII centuries. most grammarians of the indefinite article as the main one singled out the indefinitely classifying meaning, as the accompanying - quantitative. The definite article has a demonstrative meaning. In the XVIII century. normative grammars, not limited to the description of linguistic facts, seek to establish linguistic norms and rules. At the same time, two concepts are developed regarding the essence of the article. According to one, it is an independent part of fragments of a narrative text, a situation that is being formed (the indefinite article) or that has been formed (the definite article). Therefore, the use of articles is to some extent an indicator of the literary genre. In the XX century. The article is still not recognized by all grammarians as an independent part of speech. J. Kerm, for example, does not include the article among the parts of speech he lists, but considers the use of articles only in connection with the classification of nouns. In particular, he states the importance of using the definite article with proper names in the plural form. O. Jespersen refers the article to pronouns and includes the definite article in the subclass of demonstrative pronouns, and the indefinite article in the subclass of indefinite pronouns.
• Already in the language of the Old English period, the demonstrative pronouns masculine sē, feminine sēo and neuter đ1t usually acted as functional words indicating the private, singular nature of the object denoted by the noun with which they were used, for example: đ1t land - land (definite).
• Over time, the clarifying function of the named demonstrative pronouns has been even more widely developed, while their function as demonstrative pronouns.
• Simultaneously with the development of a new meaning, the form of the named pronouns also changed. It has a slightly different character in dialects, but nevertheless it can be noted that the formation of a single form in the northern dialects took place faster than in the central and southern dialects.
• One of the first changes was the elimination of suppletiveness, which exists in the nominative singular masculine and feminine, which was expressed in the replacement of the root with the initial s - (in the forms sē and sēo) by đ, which gave đē and đēo. The forms đē and đēo, due to the contraction of the diphthong ēo in ē, coincided in the 12th century. The forms of case and gender gradually lost their differences, firstly, due to the loss of the category of grammatical gender by the language.
• As a result of all these processes, the definite article in the period of the XII-XIV centuries turned into the invariable word the, which exists in the modern language.
• Closely connected with the development of the definite article was the development of the indefinite article as a clarifying word to indicate the generalized nature of the noun.
• The material for the formation of the indefinite article was the Old English numeral ǎn - one, which already at the end of the Old English period began to be used not only as a numeral, but also as a word indicating the generalized nature of the noun. In this meaning, ǎn is in an unstressed position in the flow of speech. In this position, the long [a:] was shortened into a short [a], as a result of which the numeral ǎn split into two words: the numeral ǎn, which in the 12th century gave oon and later one, and the indefinite article an, which was preserved in the language of the early Middle English period. [one; 135]
• In the 13th-14th centuries, in connection with the onset of the process of dropping n in unstressed syllables, the sound [n] dropped out in the form an in those cases when it was followed by words beginning with a consonant, but remained before words beginning with a vowel. This feature of the use of the forms of the article a and an exists in the language to this day.
• Conclusion
• As a result of the work carried out, it was found out that various pronouns were subject to changes over several periods, but in the New English period, the state of the entire pronoun system of the English language approached the modern one.
• The changes taking place in the system were caused both by historical events in the life of the country and by general changes in the entire language. In each period, different categories of pronouns had their own characteristics. So the features of the pronoun system of the Old English language should be considered:
• 1) the presence of a dual number of pronouns of the first and second person (a special form of pronouns to refer to persons or objects)
• 2) the absence of possessive pronouns, the role of which was played by the genitive form of the corresponding personal pronoun
• 3) the presence of a special group of demonstrative pronouns that have already lost or almost lost their main meaning of the demonstrative pronoun, turning into a definite article
• 4) preservation of the instrumental form in separate groups of pronouns
• In the Middle English and New English periods, the number of categories of pronouns increases: to the existing ones - personal, demonstrative, interrogative, indefinite - relative and reflexive pronouns are added. In addition, there are very significant changes in the groups of personal and demonstrative pronouns.
• One of the features of the grammatical system of the language of the Middle English period should be considered the final formation of the definite and indefinite articles. However, the origin of the article is attributed to a somewhat earlier time. In the XVI-XVIII centuries. the article was considered as a sign of a noun, which stood out among other parts of speech mainly on this basis. At the end of the XVI century. there was another concept, according to which the article was considered as a kind of adjective. In the 17th century, in addition, some grammarians considered the article to be an independent part of speech. In the same period, more particular interpretations were also quite common: the article is a certain property of a noun, the article is a certain determiner, the article is a particle. notes that the terms "definite" and "indefinite" were introduced by J. Howell in 1662. In the XVII-XVIII centuries. most grammarians of the indefinite article as the main one singled out the indefinitely classifying meaning, as the accompanying - quantitative. The definite article has a demonstrative meaning. In the XVIII century. normative grammars, not limited to the description of linguistic facts, seek to establish linguistic norms and rules.
• Further changes in the pronoun system of the English language are inevitable, since as society develops, the language develops.
• Bibliography
• 10. Davis, A., & McGrail, E. (2009). "Proof-revising" with podcasting: Keeping readers in mind as students listen to and rethink their writing. The Reading Teacher, 62(6), 522–529.