futor@lll-crg.UUCP (Randal Futor) (09/13/85)
I don't yet know how to excerpt articles into these postings, so this will have to explain itself... English has never had a "formal" pronoun as such; certain dialects have used formal constructions, but no analog to Sie (German) or vous (French) was ever mentioned to ME in classes on the development of the language or Old English (OE). Our text (Bright -- pub. data not with me @ office; if you're THAT curious, you'll find it) contained a 4x3 chart of the forms as used around AD1000 (+/-100(?)), the rows of which were typical to stud- ents of Germanic (& other) off-shoots, i.e., Nominative, Genitive, Dative & Accusative. The interesting (??) labels were those of the columns: Singular, Dual (!!!!) and Plural; yes, at one time, the language allowed us to indicate that we were (would have been??) speaking to just two people, but I know of NO usage involving the "inc-" forms left around today. If there is sufficient response, I will attempt to post this chart to one or the other of these newsgroups; please give me some suggestion of how to represent the edh, though, or I will have to use a "d" & include a note about it (also, the macrons aren't easy to convey without using a minus on the line above the vowel which then means leaving a blank line between "lines" in the chart -- suggs??). Thanx in advance -- Randy (email: futor@lll-crg.arpa) ----- I can't see you, so don't pretend to be there! :wq