3.8.5.2. Possessive pronouns

Singular number					Plural number
1 person	2 person	3 person			1 person	2 person	3 person
		masculine	neuter	feminine
mīn, mi/ my	thīn, thī/ thy	his	his	hir, her	our	your	hire, their

Note The forms mīn, thīn were used if the following word began with a vowel or with h-, e.g. myn advocate (my advocate), myn herte (my heart) or as a predicative, e.g. Mine eyes were half-closed in sleep. Soft music came to mine ear. (Oina-Morul from «The Works of Ossian, the Son of Fingal», James MacPherson) The forms «my», «thy» were used before a word with an initial consonant (except h-), e.g. my blisse, thy child.

In the XVII- XVIII cc the two variants of the possessive pronouns split into two sets of forms called in modern grammars «conjoint» and «absolute». In early NE the possessive pronouns of the plural number acquired the ending –es: oures, yours, theirs. There also arose a new possessive pronoun «its» (derived from it), which replaced neuter «his». The pronoun «its» was built on the analogy of the genetive case of nouns, of the form «his» or the new variants of other possessive pronouns, like «oures», «yours».

In ME, some lexical replacements took place. (1) The OE feminine pronoun of the 3-rd person sg he < OE hēo and the masculine pronoun hē became homonyms, which was very inconvenient. From about 1300 on the forms sce, sho, sche, she appeared in the Northern and East Midland dialects. Some scholars regard those forms have developed from OE hēo, others speak of the influence the demonstrative feminine sēo, still others consider Scandinavian sja as the source of the pronoun she. However, this replacement was incomplete, as the objective forms of OE hēo were preserved (hir, her). Thus, a new suppletive pair emerged (she – her). After the vocalization of r «her» changed into [hə:]. (2) As the plural form of the 3-rd person hē < OE hīe coincided with the masculine and feminine forms in the singular, it was replaced by the Scandinavian forms thei / they. The form theim / them replaced the objective form hem. The form hem remained in the contracted forms: take’em, let’em, which survived in ModE. Besides, the Scandinavian «their» replaced the corresponding ME possessive pronoun hire. The two sets of forms occurred side by side in Late ME texts: That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke (Chaucer) (Who has helped them when they were sick).

3.8.5.3. Demonstrative Pronouns

In Early ME the OE demonstrative pronouns sē (masculine), sēo (feminine), þæt (neuter), þes (masculine), þēos (feminine), þis (neuter) lost most of of their case and gender distinctions: out of 17 forms each retained only two. The ME descendants of these pronouns are that and this. The former nominative and accusative cases, neuter, singular served in ME as singular of all cases and genders. The pronoun this came to denote a thing nearer in time or space, the pronoun that pointed at what was farther away in time or space. Each pronoun had a corresponding plural form:

sg this pl thise/thes(e) NE this – these

sg that pl tho/thos(e) NE that – those

Number distinctions in demonstrative pronouns have survived in ModE. No other noun modifier agrees now with the noun in number, except this and that.