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Volume 35, Issue 2
  • ISSN 0176-4225
  • E-ISSN: 1569-9714
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Abstract

It is commonly held that Present-Day English are not descended from Old English but derive from the Old Norse third-person plural pronouns . This paper argues that the early northern English orthographic and distributional textual evidence agrees with an internal trajectory for the ‘þ-’ type personal pronouns in the North and indicates an origin in the Old English demonstratives . The Northern Middle English third-person plural pronominal system was the result of the reanalysis from demonstrative to personal pronoun that is common cross-linguistically in Germanic and non-Germanic languages alike.

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2018-07-12
2025-01-21

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A native origin for Present-Day English they, their, them
Diachronica 35, 165 (2018); https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.16026.col
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): demonstrative; LAEME; Lindisfarne Gospels gloss; Northern Middle English; Old English; Old Norse; Old Northumbrian; personal pronoun

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