| Declension In English |
Website Links For English |
Information AboutDeclension In English |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT ENGLISH DECLENSION | |
| old english personal pronouns | |
| SHOPPER'S DELIGHT | |
|
The English Language once had an extensive Declension system similar to modern German or Icelandic . Old English distinguished between the Nominative , Accusative , Dative , Genitive , and Instrumental cases. Declension fell into disuse during the Middle English period, when Accusative and Dative pronouns merged into a single Objective pronoun. Modern English no longer uses declension, except for remnants of the former system in a few Pronoun s. "Who" and "whom", "he" and "him", "she" and "her", etc. are remnants of both the old nominative vs. accusative and ''also'' of nominative vs. dative. In other words, "whom" serves as both the dative and accusative version of the nominative pronoun " Who ". In Old English (and in modern German, Icelandic, etc.), these cases had distinct pronouns. This collapse of the separate case pronouns into the same word is one of the reasons grammarians consider the dative and accusative cases to be extinct in English — neither is an ideal term for the role played by "whom". Instead, the term '' Objective '' is often used; that is, "whom" is a generic objective pronoun which can describe either a direct or an indirect object. The nominative case, "who", is called simply the '' Subjective ''. The information formerly conveyed by having distinct case forms is now mostly provided by Preposition s and word order. Modern English Morphologically distinguishes only one case, the Possessive Case — which some linguists argue is not a case at all, but a Clitic (see the entry for Genitive Case for more information). With only a few pronominal exceptions, the objective and subjective always have the same form. EVOLUTION OF ENGLISH DECLENSION Interrogative pronouns Old masculine/feminine to the modern person 1 - Most generally speaking, in non-subject rules: "whom" is used in "formal" situations and in writing, while "who" is colloquial or "informal". A dialectal investigation should be taken into consideration, of course. Old neuter to the modern thing 1 - Usually replaced by ''of which'', except where inappropriate First person personal pronouns Singular Plural Second person personal pronouns n.b. þ is a letter from Old English, roughly corresponding to ''th''. Old and Middle English singular to the Modern English archaic informal Old and Middle English plural to the archaic formal to the modern general ''You'' in the nominative case was used in Middle English only as a formal but not as a plural pronoun. So there was a difference between ''You are'' (singular formal) and ''Ye are'' (plural informal). Third person personal pronouns Feminine singular Masculine singular Neuter singular Plural EXTERNAL LINK
|