PRONOUNS.

42. Pronouns are words used instead of nouns or the equivalents of nouns. They differ from nouns in not being names; they resemble nouns in referring to persons or things. E.g. John told me that he would call for us before we went to see them.'

6

Pronouns enable us to avoid a tedious repetition of nouns, but they do much more than this. 'I,' for instance, not only stands for my name, but identifies me as the speaker. Thou' not only stands for the name of the person addressed, but points him out. 'He' not only stands for the name of the person spoken of, but also identifies him with some person previously referred to.

When pronouns are used to define or limit nouns, they clearly cease to be pronouns. In the sentence 'John brought this book,' 'this' does not stand for the noun 'book,' and is not a pronoun, but a demonstrative adjective. Such adjectives are called sometimes adjective pronouns and sometimes pronominal adjectives, but the learner should distinctly understand that, though they are pronominal in origin, they are not pronominal in function, and that it is function alone which determines the part of speech to which a word belongs.

As pronouns may be used instead of the equivalents of nouns, it follows that they may be used instead of

1. An adjective used as a noun, e.g. 'The good are happy, but they are not always successful.'

2. A numeral, e.g. 'The first three won prizes, and they richly deserved them.'

3. A verbal noun, e.g. 'He was fond of fishing, and it agreed with his health.'

4. A gerundial infinitive, e.g. 'It is pardonable to err.'

5. A noun sentence, e.g. 'That two and two are four is indisputable, and no one will deny it.'

Pronouns are divided into: 1. Personal, 2. Demonstrative, 3. Possessive, 4. Emphatic, 5. Reflexive, 6. Relative, 7. Interrogative, 8. Distributive, 9. Reciprocal, 10. Quanti tative, 11. Numeral, 12. Indefinite.

Exercises.

1. Point out the pronouns in the following passages-
2. I come to bury Cæsar, not to praise him.-Shakspere,

b.

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.-Shakspere.

c. I myself saw him.

d. They loved each other warmly.

e. Some one said that I gave each of them something.

f. Which of the three did he give to the boy who hurt himself?

2. What do the pronouns in the following passages stand for?—

a.

b.

C.

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,

The saddest are these: 'It might have been.'— Whittier.
That I have ta'en away this old man's daughter

It is most true; true, I have married her.-Shakspere.
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is

To have a thankless child.-Id.

d. To be or not to be: that is the question.-Id.

e. That he is mad, 'tis true.—Id.

f. He that lacks time to mourn, lacks time to mend.

Eternity mourns that. 'Tis an ill cure

For life's worst ills, to have no time to feel them.-Taylor.

PERSONAL PRONOUNS.

43. Personal Pronouns are used to denote

1. The person speaking (the First Person);
2. The person spoken to (the Second Person);
3. The person spoken of (the Third Person).

There is one important difference between pronouns of the first and second person and pronouns of the third: the former have no inflexion for gender, there being no necessity to indicate the sex of the person speaking and the person spoken to; the latter, however, are inflected for gender, and, in this respect, resemble the demonstratives. Some grammarians classify personal pronouns of the third person with the demonstratives.

I originally ended in c or ch, of which traces long survived in provincial English. Comp. "Ch'ill pick your teeth, Zir.' [A speech put into the mouth of Edgar, who has assumed the character of a Somersetshire peasant, in 'King Lear.'] "Ch was bore at Taunton Dean; where should I be bore else?' (Somersetshire proverb.) Cp. Lat. ego, Ger. ich.

My (O.E. mín), thy (O.E. thin), our (O.E. úre), and your (O.E. eower) are not now used as personal pronouns but as demonstrative adjectives, i.e. they cannot stand by themselves, but require to be followed by the noun which they limit. They were, however, originally used as personal pronouns. They should be carefully distinguished from the corresponding possessive pronouns, mine, thine, ours, yours, which not only can be used without a following noun, but can themselves be used in the Nominative or Objective case, e.g. ' Mine is thine;' 'You take mine, and I will take yours.'

Before a vowel and the aspirate the older forms mine and thine are still used in poetry in preference to my and thy. Comp. an and a; none and no. The learner should be careful to observe that mine is not formed from my, but my from mine.

Me (O.E. mé) is used both as a Direct Object, e.g. He struck me,' and as an Indirect Object, e.g. He gave me the book.' It is as an Indirect Object that it is used with the impersonal verbs, e.g. Methinks [i.e. it seems to me, from O.E. thincan, to seem, not from thencan, to think], and after certain interjections, e g. 'Woe is me.'

We (O.E. we). Comp. Ger. wir.

Us (O.E. us). Used both as a Direct and Indirect Object, e.g. 'He trusted us' (Dir.); He gave us some food' (Ind.).

Thou (O.E. thú). This pronoun is now rarely used except in poetical and elevated language. Its old use will be best illustrated by the following passage from Fuller: We maintain that thou from superiors to inferiors is proper as a sign of command; from equals to equals is passable as a note of familiarity; but from inferiors to superiors, if proceeding from ignorance, hath a smack of clownishness; if from affectation, a tone of contempt.' Comp.

If thou thou'st' him some thrice, it shall not be amiss.

Shakspere.

All that Lord Cobham did was at thy instigation, thou viper! for I thou thee, thou traitor.-(Lord Coke, addressing Raleigh.)

Prithee don't thee and thou me; I believe I am as good a man as yourself.-Miller of Mansfield.

You began to be substituted for thou in the 13th century. Thee (O.E. thé) is used both as a Direct and Indirect Object, e.g. 'I love thee;' 'I gave thee my word.'

Ye (O.E. ge, probably pronounced ye-comp. y-clept, i.e. ge-clept, called) was exclusively used formerly as the Nominative Case, but

1 Comp. the use of the French verb tutoyer, i.e. to use tu and toi in speaking to a person.

is now so used only in elevated language, having been superseded by the objective form you, e.g. 'I know you not whence ye are (Bible); Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you' (Ib.) Shakspere, however, occasionally reverses the pronouns, e.g. 'I do beseech ye, if you bear me hard.' By Milton's time the two pro. nouns had become hopelessly confused.

I call ye and declare ye now, returned

Successful beyond hope to lead ye forth.-Milton.

You (O.E. eon) is now used

1. As a nominative plural of courtesy, e.g. 'How are you, sir?'

2. As a real Nominative plural, e.g. You were there, boys.' 3. As a Direct Obj., e.g. 'I know you.'

་

4. As an Indirect Obj., e.g. 'I give you my word.'

He (O.E. he) is often corrupted in Middle English and in modern provincial into a, e.g. 'Quoth a,' i.e. quoth he.

And then my husband-God be with his soul !

'A was a merry man-took up the child.-Shakspere.

And I thowt a said what a owt to 'a said an I comed awaäy.

Tennyson.

Him (O.E. him) was originally the Dative of 'he.' For the dative suffix -m compare who-m, whil-om, seld-om. The cld Accusative was hine, which had entirely disappeared even as early as the 14th century. Cp. Ger. ihm (Dat.), ihn (Acc.).

His (O.E. hise) is a true possessive formed from he. Comp. Devonshire 'hees.' It may be used either adjectivally or pronominally, e.g. This is his book;'His is better than yours.'

She (O.E. seó, the feminine definite article). The old feminine personal pronoun was heo, which survives as hoo in the Lancashire dialect. Comp.

Eawr Marget declares, had hoo clooas to put on,
Hoo'd goo up to Lunnon an' talk to th' greet mon,

An' if things were na awtered when there hoo had been,
Hoo's fully resolved t' sew up meawth an' eend;

Hoo's neawt to say again t' king,

But hoo loikes a fair thing,

An hoo says hoo can tell when hoo's hurt.-Mrs. Gaskell.

Her in modern English represents

1. The O.E. hire (Poss.), e.g. I have her book.

2. The O.E. hire (Dat.), e.g. I gave her a book.

3. The O.E. hi (Acc.), e.g. I saw her.

It (O.E. hit). The suffix -t was a neuter suffix. Comp. that, what.

Its (O.E. his) is a comparatively modern word. It does not occur once in the Authorized Version of the Bible (1611), though in

some modern editions it has crept into Lev. xxv. 5, where the true reading is 'it.' See below. Comp.

'If the salt have lost his savour.'

The fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind.'

'Its' occurs once in Shakspere's 'Measure for Measure,' i. 2, and frequently in The Winter's Tale.' Bacon never uses the word. Milton uses it twice at least, e.g. 'The mind is its own place.' By Dryden's time (1631-1700) the word had become thoroughly naturalized. Commenting on the following line in Ben Jonson's 'Catiline,' 'Though heaven should speak with all his wrath at once,' he says, Heaven is ill syntax with his.'

In Middle English, and still in the English of the north-western counties, we find it used as a possessive, e.g.

The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long,

That it's had it head bit off by it young.-King Lear.

Go to it grandame, child. . . it grandame will give it a plum. K. John. Even now we write it-self, not its-self. See Trench's English Past and Present,' and Craik's Julius Cæsar.'

They (O.E. thá), Their (O.E. thára), Them (O.E. thám) were respectively the Nom., Poss., and Dat. plurals of the old definite article. The plurals of the old third personal pronoun were: Nom. hí, Poss. hira, Dat. him, Acc. hí.

1. Parse the personal pronouns in the following passages—

a. O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,

That I am meek and gentle with these butchers.-Shakspere. b. O thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee devil. — Id.

E