Contents Introduction The development of personal pronouns in English

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 pronouns⁷ 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 England⁸ 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.