16. 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		wē		wit
	Gen	min		ūre		uncer
	Dat	mē		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 2^nd person of the personal pronouns (see the explanation below).

4. 3^rd person.As far as in the Early ME many forms in the 3^rd 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	hē 	he 	he	preserved original form
	F, Sg	hēo/hīo 	he 	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 	hit 	it	preserved original form, lost initial [h]
	Plural	hēo/hīe 	he/hi 	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 	thou	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 	ye 	Coincided phonetically with wē  was dropped

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