Demonstrative Pronouns

§ 178. 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. (see Table 6) and the prototype of this with the same subdivisions: pes Masc, pēos Fem., pis Neut. and pās pl. They were declined like adjectives according to a five-case system: Nom., Gen., Dat., Acc, and Instr. (the latter having a special form only in the Masc. and Neut. sg).

Table 6

Declension of sē, sēo, pæt

As seen from the table, the paradigm of the demonstrative pronoun sē contained many homonymous forms. Some case endings resembled those of personal pronouns, e.g. -m — Dat. Masc. and Neut. sg and Dat. pl; the element -r- in the Dat. and Gen. sg Fem. and in the Gen. pl. These case endings, which do not occur in the noun paradigms, are often re­ferred to as "pronominal" endings (-m, -r-, -t).

§ 179. Demonstrative pronouns are of special importance for a stu­dent of OE for they were frequently used as noun determiners and through agreement with the noun, indicated its number, gender and case. The forms of the pronouns may help to define the forms of the nouns in am­biguous instances, e. g. in the phrases on p ǣ m lande, tō pære heorde ‘on that land, to that herd’ the forms of the pronouns help to differenti­ate gender: p ǣ m is Neut. or Masc. pǣre is Fem.; both nouns are in the Dat. sg and happen to have identical endings: -e. In the following sen­tences the forms pǣt and pā help to distinguish between numbers:

Uton... ʒesēon pǣt word (sg) ‘let us see that event’

Maniʒe cōmen to bycʒenne pā ping (pl) ‘many came to buy those things’

(The nouns are Neut. a -stems with homonymous sg and pl forms.)