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Personal pronouns in Middle English
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period
During the XII-XIV centuries, significant changes took place in the system
of personal pronouns. First of all, the case system has been simplified. Arakin 130
This happened due to the fact that for all personal pronouns the genitive case
as a form of personal pronoun disappeared. It merged with possessive pronouns,
retaining only the ability to convey a possessive meaning, acting as a definition
function. He has lost his function.
This process began in the ancient period, when the genitive forms assumed
the functions of indicating ownership, for example: his leomu - his arms and legs.
Here the form his, as the genitive form of the personal pronoun he, does not agree
either in case or number with its modifier leomu, the nominative plural form.
The forms of the genitive case of the 1st and 2nd person singular and plural
mīn, đīn, ūr, ēower already in Old English had agreement in case and number with
their determinants, i.e. they had features characteristic of independent forms of
possessive pronouns. Therefore, it can be recognized that the process of separating
these forms into forms of possessive pronouns took place already by the end of the
Old English period.
4
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) was a form of the English language spoken after the Norman conquest (1066)
until the late 15th century.
In the 11th-12th centuries, the genitive form his acquires agreement in
number, receiving the form hise, for example: hise ēren - his ears. The genitive
forms of the feminine pronoun here and the 3rd person plural pronoun hire
remained unchanged due to the presence of the final -е.
In parallel with these changes, the dative and accusative cases of personal
pronouns were merged into one form.
Thus, in the system of personal pronouns, a two-case system also arises, but
it differs from the system of the name: these are the nominative and object cases.
Possessive pronouns constitute an independent category, which, however, is very
closely related to personal pronouns, since they also have face shapes.
Significant
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changes have taken place in the composition of personal
pronouns. From the middle of the XIII century. dual forms disappeared. Pronouns
of the 3rd l. m. and w. p. hē, heo and many others. hours hie, heo coincided both
under stress and in a less stressed position, which is quite possible for pronouns:
he, hi could mean 'he', 'she' and 'they'. This state of affairs would lead to the
removal of the distinction of number, as well as person and non-person.
Meanwhile, in nouns the category of number was preserved, and the disappearance
of grammatical gender did not mean the absence of a purely semantic difference
between person and non-person. Pronouns, anaphorically replacing nouns, proved
unable to convey these differences, and, therefore, to fulfill their inherent
functions. The old pronouns were replaced by others.
Along with the old forms of them. hi (he, ha), genus. here, object hem, new
forms they, them, their appeared—a modification of the Scandinavian đeir (n. p.),
đeirra (genus), đieim (objective). Borrowed Scandinavian forms spread gradually
from north to south. In the east-central dialect, already in an early monument of the
13th century. "Ormulum" is regularly used đеZZ (= they). In Chaucer, the
nominative case is also always represented by the borrowed form. In the south, the
old he, ha is preserved longer. In the object case, Chaucer usually uses the old form
hem. Later, in the London dialect, they are affirmed; in the south, the old form 'em
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This is a redirect from an ambiguous page name to a page or list that disambiguates it.
is still preserved in local dialects. The modern colloquial form 'em (Ask 'em about
it) is also derived from the old pronoun hem.
The very fact of borrowing a pronoun is an extremely rare occurrence.
Pronouns that do not have referential fixedness belong to the most stable, deep
lexical layer of the language. The fact that this borrowing was caused by the
coincidence of pronominal forms, as indicated above, is beyond doubt, but
probably another factor was at work here, which K-Brunner drew attention to. This
is the existence in English itself of demonstrative pronouns beginning with /T/, /D/.
In essence, only in the north are attested the objective case form đaim and
the possessive pronoun đeir, which really reflected the Scandinavian forms. Thus,
they reflects Old English đ1m, đam rather than Scandinavian đeim. Perhaps,
however, a simpler explanation of these facts. The spellings them and them, tham
are found in parallel in various monuments (“Cursor Mundi”
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, etc.). Them is more
common in the north, them in the center and south. Therefore, it is hardly correct
to consider that them is borrowed from the Scandinavian them: the diphthong /ei/
did not change into /e/; on the other hand, them quite accurately reflects the Old
English form đ1m.
Thus, only with respect to they can we say for sure that this is a borrowed
form; but it also functioned for some time in parallel with đo, from the Old English
demonstrative pronoun đa. The pronoun they entered the national language not as a
direct borrowing, but as a form of the northern dialect.
The feminine pronoun also took on a new form. In Middle English we find
she, sho; their origin is usually explained by contamination with index seo; but /S/
could arise only under the condition that in seo the stress shifted to the second
component of the diphthong, i.e. the diphthong became ascending: 'seo > se'o <
sjo; the combination /sj/ was easily assimilated. This explains the sho form;
apparently, the form she could function in parallel, from the old seo or heo, where
the vowel /e:/ was retained, but the consonant, by analogy, came from sho.
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The Cursor Mundi (or ‘Over-runner of the World’) is an early 14th-century religious poem written in Middle
English that presents an extensive retelling of the history of Christianity from the creation to the doomsday.
The pronoun ic naturally passed into ich /i7/, but dropped out in Middle
English /7/, probably in an unstressed position. When /7/ fell out, /i:/ lengthened
due to compensation. Graphically, it became necessary to use the capital I as a
more conspicuous one: in a Middle English text written without spaces, it would be
difficult to distinguish a single lowercase i.
Pronoun 2nd l. pl. hours in the nominative case also naturally had the form
uē. In the object case, however, the same diphthong change occurred as in seo:
'eow became e'ow.
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