Other Classes of Pronouns (Interrogative, Indefinite, Relative)

§ 453. The other classes of OE pronouns — interrogative and indefinite — were subjected to the same simplifying changes as all nominal parts of speech. The paradigm of the OE interrogative pronoun hwā was reduced to two forms — who, the Nom. case, and whom, the Obj. case. In ME texts the two cases were carefully distinguished, but in Early NE they were commonly confused: Who is there?... Between who? (Shakespeare); Who would you speak with? (Ben Jonson). Who Nom. is used here instead of whom.[52]

The Gen. case of OE hwā, hwæt — hwæs — developed into a separate interrogative pronoun, similarly with the Gen. case of personal pronouns — ME and NE whose. OE hwi, the former Instr. case of the same pronouns continued to be used as a separate pronoun why; OE hwelc, ME which, formerly used only with relation to person widened its application and began to be used with relation to things. ME whether (from OE hwæper) was used as an interrogative pronoun in the meaning ‘which of the two’ but later was mainly preserved as a conjunction.

§ 454. Most indefinite pronouns of the OE period simplified their morphological structure and some pronouns fell out of use. For instance, man died out as an indefinite pronoun; OE derived pronouns with the prefixes ā-, ǣʒ-, ne- were replaced by phrases or simplified: OE ǣʒhwelc, āʒhwilc, ǣlc yielded ME eech, NE each; OE pyslic, puslic, pullic, swelc were replaced by such; nān-pinʒ (from ne+ān+pinʒ) became nothing, etc. Eventually new types of compound indefinite pronouns came into use — with the component -thing, -body, -one, etc; in NE they developed a two-case paradigm like nouns: the Comm. and the Poss. or Gen. case: anybody — anybody's. (For the development of the pronoun ān into the indefinite article see § 450.)

§ 455. OE demonstrative and interrogative pronouns became the source of a new type of pronouns — relative. Their growth is described and exemplified in the paragraphs dealing with the development of the complex sentence. (§ 543 ff.)

THE ADJECTIVE

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<== попередня сторінка	\|	наступна сторінка ==>
Demonstrative Pronouns. Development of Articles	\|	Decay of Declensions and Grammatical Categories

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