The OE demonstrative pronouns, their grammatical categories and declension. The rise of the articles

There were two demonstrative pronouns in OE: the prototype of NE that, which distinguished three genders in the sg. And had one form for all the genders in the pl. and the prototype of this. They were declined like adjectives according to a five-case system: Nom., Gen., Dat., Acc., and Instr.

Demonstrative pronouns were frequently used as noun determiners and through agreement with the noun indicated its number, gender and case 2 types:the 1^st with the demonstrative meaning considerably weakened. And have 5-th case –Instrumental (творительный). 2^nd – with a clear demonstr.meaning..

The articles have to do with the category of Determination (definiteness/indefiniteness). Causes for Rise of Articles:

1. In OE the there were two declensions of adjectives – strong (definite) and weak (indefinite) – and the inflections of these declensions indicated whether the noun that followed the adjective was definite or indefinite. At the end of the ME Period the declensions of the Adjective disappeared and there was a necessity to find another way to indicate the definiteness/indefiniteness of a noun. Thus the articles appeared.

2. In OE the word-order was free because inflections were employed to show the relations of the words in a sentence. In ME and NE the majority of the inflections disappeared and the word-order became fixed. This meant that the first place in a sentence was usually occupied by the theme (information already known à marked with the definite article) and the second place – by the rheme (new information à marked with the indefinite article).

Definite Article. As it was mentioned above, the definite article appeared from the OE demonstrative pronoun se (M, Sg, Nom) from the paradigm of the OE demonstrative pronoun “that” because it was often used to indicate a definite object or notion.

Indefinite Article. The indefinite article appeared from the OE numeral ān (one) and had the meaning of “oneness” (it still indicates only nouns in Sg, i.e. nouns indicating one object or notion).

In OE ān had 5-case paradigm that was lost in ME and only one form was left – oon/one. Later it was employed in the building of the indefinite article a/an.