miker@sri-unix (07/16/82)
1. I thought that the following excepts from Bodmer's 'The Loom of
Language' might be of interest to nlang readers. They refer to the following
table of Old English third person pronouns, with modern derivatives shown
in capitals:
Masc. Neuter Fem. Plural
----- ------ ---- ------
Nom. he (HE) hit (IT) heo hie
Acc. hine hit hie hie
Dat. him (HIM) him hire him
Gen. his (HIS) his hire hira
(HER)
"The objective forms (me, thee, him, etc.) . . . are really survivals of
a dative. The table does not show where 'she' and 'its' came from. The
'she' probably came from the old English demonstrative 'seo' ('that').
'Its' was a later innovation. The 1611 edition of the English Bible uses
'his' for things and males. This pronoun is a good example of analogical
extension [from the genitive suffix -es]. The first person to use it was
an Italian in 1598. Englishmen adopted it during the 17th. century.
. . . In one way, the use of the pronouns is still changing. Throughout
the English-speaking world, people commonly use 'they' to avoid
invidious sex discrimination, or the roundabout expression 'he or she'.
Similarly, 'them' is common in speech for 'him or her' and 'their' for
'his or her'. Probably the written language will soon assimilate the
practise, and grammarians will then say that 'they', 'them' and 'their'
are common gender singular, as well as plural forms of the third person."
2. Are there any other languages in which this problem occurs?
You would not expect it in most European languages because the gender of
a pronoun would depend on the grammatical gender of the word substituted
for. You might expect it in Persian, which has developed similarly to
English, as in dropping grammatical gender, but Persian only has one
third person singular pronoun, which goes to show that you can subjugate
women without having a special pronoun for them.