Old English pronouns

The English language once had an extensive declension system similar to Latin, modern German or Icelandic. Old English distinguished between the nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive cases; and for strongly declined adjectives and some pronouns also a separate instrumental case (which otherwise and later completely coincided with the dative). Declension was greatly simplified during the Middle English period, when accusative and dative pronouns merged into a single objective pronoun. Nouns in Modern English no longer decline for case, except in a sense for possessive, and for remnants of the former system in a few pronouns.

"Who" and "whom", "he" and "him", "she" and "her", etc. are remnants of both the old nominative versus accusative and "also" of nominative versus dative. In other words, "her" (for example) serves as both the dative and accusative version of the nominative pronoun "she". In Old English as well as modern German and Icelandic as further examples, these cases had distinct pronouns.

This collapse of the separate case pronouns into the same word is one of the reasons grammarians consider the dative and accusative cases to be extinct in English — neither is an ideal term for the role played by "whom". Instead, the term "objective" is often used; that is, "whom" is a generic objective pronoun which can describe either a direct or an indirect object. The nominative case, "who", is called simply the "subjective". The information formerly conveyed by having distinct case forms is now mostly provided by prepositions and word order.

Modern English morphologically distinguishes only one case, the possessive case — which some linguists argue is not a case at all, but a clitic (see the entry for genitive case for more information). With only a few pronominal exceptions, the objective and subjective always have the same form.

Old English personal pronouns

Evolution of the English pronouns

Interrogative pronouns

Masculine/feminine (person)

Plural

Note that the ye/you distinction still existed, at least optionally, in Early Modern English: "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" from the King James Bible.

Formal and informal forms of the second person singular and plural

Neuter singular

Plural

(The origin of the modern forms is generally thought to have been a borrowing from Old Norse forms þæir, þæim, þæira.
The two different roots co-existed for some time, although currently the only common remnant is the shortened form 'em.
Cf. also the demonstrative pronouns.)

ee also

* Old English declension

External links

*Peter S. Baker. [http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/resources/IOE/inflpron.html 'Pronouns'.] In Peter S. Baker. "The Electronic Introduction to Old English". Oxford: Blackwell, 2003, c. 5.
* [http://www.engl.virginia.edu/OE/courses/handouts/magic.html The Magic Sheet] , one page color PDF summarizing Old English declension