English declension
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"Who" and "whom", "he" and "him", "she" and "her", etc. are remnants of both the old nominative versus accusative and also of nominative versus dative. In other words, "whom" serves as both the dative and accusative version of the nominative pronoun "who". In Old English as well as modern German and Icelandic as further examples, 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 prepositions 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.
- 1 Evolution of English declension
Evolution of English declension
Interrogative pronouns
Old masculine/feminine to the modern person
| Case | Old English | Middle English | Modern English |
| Nominative | hwā | who | who |
| Accusative | hwone / hwæne | whom | who / whom1 |
| Dative | hwām / hwǣm | ||
| Instrumental | hwȳ / hwon | ||
| Genitive | hwæs | whos | whose |
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
| Case | Old English | Middle English | Modern English |
| Nominative | hwæt | what | what |
| Accusative | hwæt | what / whom | |
| Dative | hwām / hwǣm | ||
| Instrumental | hwī | ||
| Genitive | hwæs | whos | whose1 |
1 - Usually replaced by of which, except where inappropriate
First person personal pronouns
Singular
| Case | Old English | Middle English | Modern English |
| Nominative | iċ | I / ich | I |
| Accusative | mē / meċ | me | me |
| Dative | mē | ||
| Genitive | mīn | min / mi | my, mine |
Plural
| Case | Old English | Middle English | Modern English |
| Nominative | wē | we | we |
| Accusative | ūs / ūsiċ | us | us |
| Dative | ūs | ||
| Genitive | ūser / ūre | ure / our | our, ours |
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
| Case | Old English | Middle English | Modern English |
| Nominative | þū | þu / thou | thou (you) |
| Accusative | þē / þeċ | þé / thee | thee (you) |
| Dative | þē | ||
| Genitive | þīn | þi / þīn / þīne / thy /thin / thine | thy, thine (your) |
Old and Middle English plural to the archaic formal to the modern general
| Case | Old English | Middle English | Modern English |
| Nominative | ġē | ye / ȝe / you | you |
| Accusative | ēow / ēowiċ | you, ya | |
| Dative | ēow | ||
| Genitive | ēower | your | your, yours |
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).
Formal and informal forms of the second person singular and plural
| Old English | Middle English | Modern English | ||||||||||
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | |||||||
| Case | Formal | Informal | Formal | Informal | Formal | Informal | Formal | Informal | Formal | Informal | Formal | Informal |
| Nominative | þū | ġē | you | thou | you | ye | you | |||||
| Accusative | þē / þeċ | ēow / ēowiċ | thee | you | ||||||||
| Dative | þē | ēow | ||||||||||
| Genitive | þīn | ēower | your, yours | thy, thine | your, yours | |||||||
Third person personal pronouns
Feminine singular
| Case | Old English | Middle English | Modern English |
| Nominative | hēo | heo / sche / ho / he / ȝho | she |
| Accusative | hīe | hire / hure / her / heore | her |
| Dative | hire | ||
| Genitive | hire | hir / hire / heore / her / here | her, hers |
Masculine singular
| Case | Old English | Middle English | Modern English |
| Nominative | hē | he | he |
| Accusative | hine | him | him |
| Dative | him | ||
| Genitive | his | his | his |
Neuter singular
Plural
External link
- [The Magic Sheet], one page color PDF summarizing Old English declension
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