The System of Pronouns in NE

Grammatical system in New English period

The adjective in Mid.E.

In ME the adjective lost grammatical categories of case and gender but still preserved the number distinction and the difference between the weak and strong forms. In NE the adjective lost its number distinction and this resulted in the loss of any agreement with its noun. E.g. a black bird – black birds. The loss of number led to the development of a new type of syntactical relation between the adjective and the noun. Agreement was replaced by adjoining (примыкание). This led to the fact that in English it is very difficult to draw a distinction line between a combination of words and a compound word. Due to this a syntactical combination of adjective plus noun may easily change into a compound word as the positive degree of the adjective coincided with the stem of the adjective. E.g. A black board – a phrase, словосочетание, a black board – compound word, a black bird – a black bird (грач).

In such cases the accent (stress) is the only indicator of the type of word. In NE the adjective has lost the difference between weak and strong forms which was closely connected with the loss of unstressed ‘e’ in final position. In ME the adjective and the article shared the semantic indication of the definite and indefinite object. E.g. in Mid.E. from the work of Chaucer – the young e sonn e > NE the young son. ME a younge squir e > NE a young squire.

In NE the system of analytical degrees of comparison developed (with the words more and most). In ME and in early NE the analytical degrees were used side by side with the synthetic ones without any differentiation. Such forms as wonderfuller could occur side by side with more wonderful depending on the wish of the author. Also forms of double comparison were possible – more wonderfuller. Later on, however, owing to the tendency to improve standard speech in connection with elaboration of school grammar certain distinction was drawn between analytical and synthetic forms. The former being used with polysyllabic adjectives the latter came to be used only with monosyllabic and some disyllabic adjective.

The most important change in pronouns is that the second person singular of personal pronouns thou and its objective case thee fall out of use together with its corresponding possessive pronoun thy (your) and its absolute form – thine. It became obsolete (rare) and as an archaic form acquired definite emotional colouring of solemnity (solemn – adj.) In NE these pronouns are characteristic of poetic elevated style.

In the 16th century the possessive pronoun of the neuter gender its was formed. Later on as grammatical gender broke down and gender came to be a semantic category differentiating living beings from lifeless things the use of the pronoun his for neuter gender came in the contradiction with a common system of gender and the pronoun his came to denote the sex of a male person. This called forth the appearance of a special neuter pronoun its. In the early new English his was replaced first by of it or it and later by its.

In the NE period the modern system of the demonstrative pronouns which distinguished number was established. In ME demonstrative pronouns were ‘thise’ the plural of the pronoun Þis (Mod. E. plural these) and the plural form of Þæt – tho were used. In NE by analogy with the plural of the nouns the form - se was added to tho > those.