Early New English pronouns

Changes in the system of pronouns are not very numerous, yet worth special attention. They are as follows:

Personal Pronouns

The system of forms that arose in Middle English is somewhat reduced by shifting the second person singular pronoun thou/thee from the sphere of everyday use into special conditions. As the tendency to use the pronoun ye in addressing one person arose earlier, in the Middle English, now this tendency grows, but the very form of the nominative case falls out of use and finally the second person is expressed, in the nominative as well as in the objective case by the only surviving form - you.

It is interesting to note that the form ye (nominative case) and you (objective) sometimes are misplaced in Shakespeare's plays - (probably the cause for this is the fact that ye was not frequently used by the beginning of

The third person neuter possessive pronoun has variant forms, too. The old form his is still in use, a new form its comes into usage. As a variant, uninflected form (bare if) may be used.

Sweet nature must pay his due (Hamlet)

The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long,

That it's had it head bit off by it young (King Lear)

It lifted up its head and did address

Itself to motion (Hamlet)

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