16. The development of personal pronouns in the history of English.

OE personal pronouns had 3 persons, 3 numbers (sing, pl, dual), 3 genders and 4 cases. E.g: ic – sing, wit – dual, wē – plural. Dual number – Germanic feature (wit – мы оба, git – вы оба).

Gender was in the 3^rd person sing. E.g: hē – hēo – hit

(m – f – n).

Cases: m f n

N ic þu hē hēo hit

G min þin his hire his

D mē þe him hire him

Acc mē þe hine hie hit

1^st pers. sg→2^nd pers.sg→3^rd pers. sg.

Many forms have survived in ME. E.g.: “and I’ll love thee”.

The feminine pronoun of the 3^rd pers. and mascul. pron. of the 3^rd per. could become identical. The language developed new ways:

1. The pl. “hie” is replaced by Sc. (от скандинав.)“they” (13^th);

2. The Object. case represented by Sc “them” (OE hem);

3. The fem. “hēo” → shē (ME) → she (NE) (as hēo was homonymous to hē; hit. The language discriminated this form, “he” – survived.

4. dual number pron-s have disappeared;

5. possessive pron-s have appeared from Gen.case

6. the new pron. “there” appeared (Sc);

7. In NE:

   • the pron. of the 2^nd pers. sg went out of use in the 17^th cent → “you” for sg. and pl, the 2^nd pl “you” replaced “зē” OE.

   • Late ME “she” is believed to have developed from the OE demonstrative pron. of the femin. gender – “sēo”

   • the other forms of OE “hēo” were preserved “hire/her” used in ME as the Obj. case and as a possessive pron. is a form of OE “hēo”. “Hers” was derived from “hire/here”.

17. The development of the adjective in history of English

OE adj possess 3 categories:

1. gender (m, f, n);

2. number (sg, pl);

3. case (5).

Main features of the adj:

1. repeated the grammatical categories of noun that they modify;

2. 2 types of declension

   1. strong (a, o - stems of noun; eall, maniз, ōþer – always str.);

   2. weak (n – stems, ilca (same) –

always weak);

3. 3 degrees of comparison:

   1. positive

   2. comparative (-ra);

   3. superlative (-est/ -ost);

Suppletive forms:

soft - softra - softost ;

micel – māra - mæˉst (much)

4. 5 cases (Nom, Gen., Dat, Accus, Instrumental (lүˉtte werede – малым войском).

In ME it became unchangeable part of speech (except for the degree of comparison). The first category to disappear was gender in 11^th cent, the Inst. case fused with Dat. But at the end of 13^th cent cases were lost.

In ME the degrees of comparison could be build in the same way, only the suffix had been weakened to –er; -est.

The alteration of root vowels in Early NE survived in old, elder, eldest where the difference in meaning from older – oldest made distinction. Also in father/ further.

The new way of formation of the degrees of comparison appeared:

More + adj. – comparative;

Most + adj.— superlative.

18. The development of demonstrative pronouns in the history of English.

Demonstrative pronouns:

OE adj possess 3 categories:

1. gender (m, f, n);

2. number (sg, pl);

3. case. In OE there were 5 cases: Nom, Dat, Gen, Acc, Instr.

Demonstrative pronouns belong to an ancient class of words that goes back to two Indo-European roots – se and to.

2 of them:

1. prototype of “that” (sē (m), þæt (n), sēo(f));

2. prototype of “this” (þes(m), þēos(n), þis(f));

1. were used as noun determiners and through agreement with the noun, indicated its number, case and gender. They can help to distinguish between gender: E.g.: þæm lande – n; þære heorde –f.

2. Dem. pron. became unchangeable. The only category that was left in the dem. Pronouns was the number (that – those).

Causes for Rise of Articles:

1. In OE the there were two declensions of adjectives – strong (definite) and weak (indefinite). At the end of the ME Period the declensions of the Adjective disappeared and there was a necessity to find another way to indicate the definiteness/ indefiniteness of a noun. Thus the articles appeared.

2. Word-order became fixed in ME. This meant that the first place in a sentence was usually occupied by the theme (information already known  marked with the definite article) and the second place – by the rheme (new information  marked with the indefinite article).

The ind. article developed from numeral ‘ān’ and often preserves traces of its meaning: Eg: a teaching time saves night.

In ME the OE demonst. pron. lost most of their inflected forms. Dem. Pron. sē, sēo, þæt led to the formation of the def. article.