The Category of Case

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 408.

The NE Pronoun

The Late ME as well as the NE pronouns of the third person are separate words with no generic ties: he, she, it, they. “It” is a direct descendant of OE “hit”, /h/ was lost.

In the 17-18th centuries the plural forms of the second person “ye”, “you”, “your” were used to apply to individuals. They ousted the corresponding singular pronouns “thou”, “thee”, “thine” from every day usage. Nowadays “thou” is found only in poetry, in some dialects.

Plural

2-nd personMEEarly NE

Nominative ye you/ye

Objective (from OE

Accusative and Dative) you you

Possessive (OE Genitive) your(e), yours your, yours

Plural

3-rd personME Early NE

Nominative hie/they they

Objective hem/them them

Possessive her(e)/their(e) their, theirs

In Early NE the syncretism of case entered a new phase: the Nominative case began to merge with the Objective case. The modern pronoun “you” comes of the ME objective case you (OE eow). Its Nominative case “ye” has become obsolete.

In Early NE there developed a new possessive pronoun “its” derived form “it”.

In the 17-18^th centuries two variants of the possessive pronouns split into two distinct sets of forms (in modern grammars called “conjoint” and “absolute”.

E.g. the possessive pronouns my, mine (ME mi, min) that were originally phonetic variants have acquired different combinability (this is my book – this is mine).