Personal and Possessive Pronouns.Since personal pronouns are noun-pronouns, it might have been expected that their evolution would repeat the evolution of nouns; in reality it was in many respects different. The development of the same grammatical categories in nouns and pronouns was not alike. It differed in the rate and extent of changes, in the dates and geographical directions, though the morphology of pronouns, like the morphology of nouns, was simplified. Before describing the grammatical changes of personal pronouns we must mention some lexical replacements. In Early ME the OE Fem. pronoun of the 3rd p. sg hēo (related to all the other pronouns of the 3rd p. — hē, hit, hīe) was replaced by a group of variants — he, ho, sce, sho, she: one of them — she — finally prevailed over the others. The new Fem. pronoun, Late ME she, is believed to have developed from the OE demonstrative pronoun of the Fem. gender — sēo (OE sē, sēo, þæt, NE that). It was first recorded in the North Eastern regions and gradually extended to other areas. About the same time — in the course of ME — another important lexical replacement took place: the OE pronoun of the 3rd p. pl hīe was replaced by the Scand. loan-word they [θei]. Like the pronoun she, it came from the North-Eastern areas and was adopted by the mixed London dialect. One more replacement was made in the set of personal pronouns at a later date — in the 17th or 18th c. Beginning with the 15th c. the pl forms of the 2nd p. — ye, you, your —: were applied more and more generally to individuals. In Shakespeare’s time the pl. forms of the 2nd p. were widely used as equivalents of thou [ðau] (ти), thee [ði:](тобі, тебе, тобою), thine [ðain](твій – абсолютна форма), thy [ðai] (твій – атрибутивна форма).Later thou became obsolete in Standard English. (Nowadays thou is found only in poetry, in religious discourse and in some dialects.) The free interchange of you and thou is observedin Shakespeare’s works. The lexical and grammatical changes in the personal and possessive pronouns are shown in Table 2: Table 2 Personal and Possessive Pronouns in ME and Early NE
Both in ME and in Early NE the pronouns were subjected to extensive grammatical changes. The category of Number was brought into conformity with the corresponding categories of nouns and verbs; the forms of the dual number of the 1st and 2nd p. went into disuse in Early ME. The category of Case underwent profound alterations: two cases fell together — Dat. and Acc. — into what may be called the Obj. case. In Late ME the paradigm of personal pronouns consisted of two cases: Nom. and Obj. The OE Gen. case of personal pronouns split from the other forms and turned into a new class of pronouns — possessive. The OE oblique case-forms of personal pronouns and the ME possessive pronouns gave rise to one more type of pronouns — reflexive. Reflexive pronouns developed from combinations of some forms of personal pronouns with the adjective self. Their origins are obvious from their modern structures: e. g. myself, ourselves consist of the Gen. case (or possessive pronoun) and the component self; himself, themselves contain the Obj. case of personal pronouns as their first components. Demonstrative Pronouns. Development of Articles. Demonstrative pronouns were adjective-pronouns; like other adjectives, in OE they agreed with the noun in case, number and gender and had a well-developed morphological paradigm. In Early ME the OE demonstrative pronouns sē, sēo, þæt and þes, þēos, þis — lost most of their inflected forms: out of seventeen forms each retained only two. The ME descendants of these pronouns are that and this, the former Nom. and Acc. cases, Neut. sg, which served now as the sg of all cases and genders. Each pronoun had a respective pl form, which made up a balanced paradigm of forms opposed through number. Sg this Pl thise/thes(e) (NE this — these) that tho/thos(e) (NE that — those) (Number distinctions in demonstrative pronouns have survived as an archaic trait in the modern grammatical system, for no other noun modifier agrees now with the noun in number.) The other direction of the development of the demonstrative pronouns se, seo, pset led to the formation of the definite article. This development is associated with a change in form and meaning. In OE texts the pronouns sē, sēo, þæt were frequently used as noun-determiners with a weakened meaning, approaching that of the modern definite article. In the manuscripts of the 11th and 12th c. this use of the demonstrative pronoun becomes more and more common. In the course of ME there arose an important formal difference between the demonstrative pronoun and the definite article: as a demonstrative pronoun that preserved number distinctions whereas as a definite article — usually in the weakened form the [θ∂] — it was uninflected. The meaning and functions of the definite article became more specific when it came to be opposed to the indefinite article, which had developed from the OE numeral and indefinite pronoun an. (In OE there existed two words, ān, a numeral, and sum, an indefinite pronoun, which were often used in functions approaching those of the modern indefinite article). It is believed that the growth of articles in Early ME was caused, or favoured, by several internal linguistic factors. The development of the definite article is usually connected with the changes in the declension of adjectives, namely with the loss of distinctions between the strong and weak forms. Originally the weak forms of adjectives had a certain demonstrative meaning resembling that of the modern definite article. These forms were commonly used together with the demonstrative pronouns sē, sēo, þæt. In contrast to weak forms, the strong forms of adjectives conveyed the meaning of “indefiniteness” which was later transferred to an, a numeral and indefinite pronoun. In case the nouns were used without adjectives or the weak and strong forms coincided, the form-words an and þæt turned out to be the only-means of expressing these meanings. The decay of adjective declensions speeded up their transition into articles. Another factor which may account for the more regular use of articles was the changing function of the word order. Relative freedom in the position of words in the OE sentence made it possible to use word order for communicative purposes, e.g. to present a new thing or to refer to a familiar thing already known to the listener. After the loss of inflections, the word order assumed a grammatical function — it showed the grammatical relations between words in the sentence; now the parts of the sentence, e.g. the subject or the objects, had their own fixed places. Accordingly, the communicative functions passed to the articles and their use became more regular.
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