Chapter 93

THE PERSONAL PRONOUNS.

§ 219. _I_, _we_, _us_, _me_, _thou_, _ye_.--These constitute the true personal pronouns. From _he_, _she_, and _it_, they differ in being destitute of gender.

These latter words are demonstrative rather than personal, so that there are in English true personal pronouns for the first two persons only.

§ 220. The usual declension of the personal pronouns is exceptionable. _I_ and _me_, _thou_ and _ye_, stand in no etymological relations to each other. The true view of the words is, that they are not irregular but defective. _I_ has no _oblique_, and _me_ no nominative case. And so it is with the rest.

§ 221. _You_.--As far as the practice of the present mode of speech is concerned, the word _you_ is a _nominative_ form; since we say _you move_, _you are moving_, _you were speaking_.

Why should it not be treated as such? There is no absolute reason why it should not. The Anglo-Saxon form for _you_ was _eow_, for _ye_, _ge_. Neither bears any sign of case at all, so that, form for form, they are equally and indifferently nominative and accusative. Hence, it, perhaps, is more logical to say that a certain form (_you_), is used _either_ as a nominative or accusative, than to say that the accusative case is used instead of a nominative. It is clear that _you_ can be used instead of _ye_ only so far as it is nominative in power.

_Ye_.--As far as the evidence of such expressions as _get on with ye_ is concerned, the word _ye_ is an accusative form. The reasons why it should or should not be treated as such are involved in the previous paragraph.

§ 222. _Me_.--carrying out the views just laid down, and admitting _you_ to be a nominative, or _quasi_-nominative case, we may extend the reasoning to the word _me_, and call it also a secondary or equivocal nominative; inasmuch as such phrases as _it is me_ = _it is I_ are common.

Now to call such expressions incorrect English is to assume the point. No one says that _c'est moi_ is bad French, and that _c'est je_ is good.

§ 223. _Caution._--Observe, however, that the expression _it is me_ = _it is I_ will not justify the use of _it is him_, _it is her_ = _it is he_ and _it is she_. _Me_, _ye_, _you_, are what may be called _indifferent forms_, i.e., nominative as much as accusative, and accusative as much as nominative. _Him_ and _her_, on the other hand, are not indifferent. The -m and -r are respectively the signs of cases other than the nominative.

§ 224. Again: the reasons which allow the form _you_ to be considered as a nominative plural, on the strength of its being used for _ye_, will not allow it to be considered a nominative singular on the strength of its being used for _thou_.

§ 225. In phrases like _you are speaking_, &c., even when applied to a single individual, the idea is really plural; in other words, the courtesy consists in treating _one_ person as _more than one_, and addressing him as such, rather than in using a plural form in a singular sense. It is certain that, grammatically considered, _you_ = _thou_ is a plural, since the verb with which it agrees is plural:--_you are speaking_, not _you art speaking_.

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