A History of English Language

Old english 53
While the ordinary meaning of sē, sēo, ðœt is ‘the’, the word is really a demonstrative
pronoun and survives in the Modern English demonstrative that. Its pronominal character
appears also in its not infrequent use as a relative pronoun (=who, which, that) and as a
personal pronoun (=he, she, it). The regular personal pronoun, however, is shown in the
next paragraph.
45. The Personal Pronoun.
From the frequency of its use and the necessity for specific reference when used, the
personal pronoun in all languages is likely to preserve a fairly complete system of
inflections. Old English shows this tendency not only in having distinctive forms for
practically all genders, persons, and cases but also in preserving in addition to the
ordinary two numbers, singular and plural, a set of forms for two people or two things—
the dual number. Indo-European had separate forms for the dual number in the verb as
well, and these appear in Greek and to a certain extent in Gothic. They are not found,
however, in Old English, and the distinction between the dual and the plural was
disappearing even from the pronoun in Old English. The dual forms are shown, however,
in the following table of the Old English personal pronoun:
Singular N. ic ðū hē (he) hēo (she) hit (it)
G. mīn ðīn his hiere his
D. mē ðē him hiere him
A. mē (mec) ðē (ðec) hine hīe hit
Dual
N. wit (we two) git (ye two)
G. uncer incer
D. unc inc
A. unc inc
Plural
N. wē gē hīe
G. ūser (ūre) ēower hiera
D. ūs ēow him
A. ūs (ūsic) ēow (ēowic) hīe
46. The Verb.
The inflection of the verb in the Germanic languages is much simpler than it was in Indo-
European times. A comparison of the Old English verb with the verbal inflection of
Greek or Latin will show how much has been lost. Old English distinguished only two
simple tenses by inflection, a present and a past, and, except for one word, it had no
inflectional forms for the passive as in Latin or Greek. It recognized the indicative,
subjunctive, and imperative moods and had the usual two numbers and three persons.