Indefinite Article

The indefinite article appeared from the OE numeral ān (one) and had the meaning of “oneness” (it still indicates only nouns in Sg, i.e. nouns indicating one object or notion).

In OE ān had 5-case paradigm that was lost in ME and only one form was left – oon/one. Later it was employed in the building of the indefinite article a/an.

Personal Pronouns

See Lecture 14 for the categories of the personal pronouns.

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

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. 3Rd 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.