2.3.1. Personal and possessive pronouns

Personal pronouns had the following forms in ME:

Table 8.2

Forms of personal pronouns in me

Singular
Case	1st person	2nd person	3rd person
			masc.	fem.	neut.
Nom.	I, ich	thou	hē	hē, shē	hit, it
Obj.	mē	thē	him	hir, her	hit, it
Plural
.	1st person	2nd person	3rd person
Nom.	wē	yē	hī, they
Obj.	ūs	you	hem, them

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, and 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).

In the course of ME another important lexical replacement took place: the OE pronoun of the 3^rd p. pl. hīe was replaced by the Scand. loan-word they [ei]. Like the pronoun she, it came from the North-Eastern areas and was adopted by the mixed London dialect. This time the replacement was more complete: they ousted the Nom. case, OE hīe, while them and their (coming from the same Scandinavian loan) replaced the oblique case forms: OE hem and heora. The two sets of forms – coming from they and hīe – occur side by side in Late ME texts. These two replacements broke up the genetic ties between the pronouns of the 3^rd p.: in OE they were all obvious derivatives of one pronominal root with the initial [h]: hē, hēo, hit, hīe. The Late ME pronouns of the 3rd p. are separate words with no genetic ties whatever: he, she, it, they (it is a direct descendent of OE hit with [h] lost).

Thus, ME personal pronouns are distinguished from the OE ones by the following features:

1. disappearance of the dual number;

2. appearance of the pronoun she;

3. the use of the pronoun they of the Scandinavian origin instead of OE hīē;

4. development of the common form for the accusative and dative cases;

5. development of a new class of pronouns – the possessive pronouns – from the genitive case of personal pronouns.

Possessive pronouns had the following forms:

Table 8.3

Forms of possessive pronouns in me

Singular				Plural
1st person	2nd person	3rd person				1st person	2 person	3 person
		masc	fem		neut
mīn, mī	thīn, thī	his	hir, her		his	our	your	hire, their

The forms mīn, thīn are used if the following word begins with the vowel or with h-, e.g. myn elbowe, myn herte ‘my heart’; thīn ooth ‘thy oath’, thīn īre ‘thy anger’, and before a pause: hoolly to be thyn ‘to be wholly thine’. They are also used as predicatives, no matter what the initial sound of the following word is: myn be the travail, and thyn be the glorie ‘mine be the labour, and yours be the glory’.

The forms my, thy are found before a word with an initial consonant (except

h-): my blisse, thy child. Thus, the use of min, thin or my, thy is determined partly by phonetic, partly by grammatical factors.