He (pronoun)
He is the masculine third-person, singular personal pronoun (nominative case) in Modern English.
Usage
Original and modern scope
As in many languages, in Old English each noun had a grammatical gender (masculine, feminine or neuter), and a pronoun was generally (but not always) selected according to its antecedent's grammatical gender. Thus because dæg ([dæj] 'day') was masculine, one would refer to the day as he.[1][2] Since in Modern English nouns have no grammatical gender (though suffixes like -or or -ess may indicate the sex of their referents), only the sex of the referent determines the pronoun to use.
Generic pronoun
Until recently, he served as a generic pronoun whose antecedent was any noun denoting a social category under which both sexes fall.
- A good student always does his homework.
- If someone asks you for help, give it to him.
- When a customer argues, always agree with him.
The use of generic he was often prescribed by manuals of style and school textbooks from the early 18th century until around the 1960s, an early example of which is Ann Fisher's 1745 grammar book A New Grammar.[3]
Other
In referring to God or to Jesus Christ, and whenever referring to the Holy Spirit conceived on that occasion to be masculine, Christians always use the capitalized forms He, His, and Him.
Etymology
He has always been the third-person masculine pronoun in English, as this table of the pronouns of Old English shows:
| Nominative | IPA | Accusative | Dative | Genitive | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | Singular | iċ | [itʃ] | mec / mē | mē | mīn | |
| Dual | wit | [wit] | uncit | unc | uncer | ||
| Plural | wē | [weː] | ūsic | ūs | ūser / ūre | ||
| 2nd | Singular | þū | [θuː] | þec / þē | þē | þīn | |
| Dual | ġit | [jit] | incit | inc | incer | ||
| Plural | ġē | [jeː] | ēowic | ēow | ēower | ||
| 3rd | Singular | Masculine | hē | [heː] | hine | him | his |
| Neuter | hit | [hit] | hit | him | his | ||
| Feminine | hēo | [heːo] | hīe | hiere | hiere | ||
| Plural | hīe | [hiːy] | hīe | heom | heora | ||
Although the pronoun has always been spelled the same, its Old English pronunciation was closer to that of modern hay.
As the OE table shows, hine and him were respectively the accusative and dative cases of he. These oblique forms persisted in Middle English:
| Person / gender | Subject | Object | Possessive determiner | Possessive pronoun | Reflexive | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | ||||||
| First | ic / ich / I I |
me / mi me |
min / minen [pl.] my |
min / mire / minre mine |
min one / mi seluen myself | |
| Second | þou / þu / tu / þeou you (thou) |
þe you (thee) |
þi / ti your (thy) |
þin / þyn yours (thine) |
þeself / þi seluen yourself (thyself) | |
| Third | Masculine | he he |
him[a] / hine[b] him |
his / hisse / hes his |
his / hisse his |
him-seluen himself |
| Feminine | sche[o] / s[c]ho / ȝho she |
heo / his / hie / hies / hire her |
hio / heo / hire / heore her |
- hers |
heo-seolf herself | |
| Neuter | hit it |
hit / him it |
his its |
his its |
hit sulue itself | |
| Plural | ||||||
| First | we we |
us / ous us |
ure[n] / our[e] / ures / urne our |
oures ours |
us self / ous silue ourselves | |
| Second | ȝe / ye you (ye) |
eow / [ȝ]ou / ȝow / gu / you you |
eower / [ȝ]ower / gur / [e]our your |
youres yours |
Ȝou self / ou selue yourselves | |
| Third | From Old English | heo / he | his / heo[m] | heore / her | - | - |
| From Old Norse | þa / þei / þeo / þo | þem / þo | þeir | - | þam-selue | |
| modern | they | them | their | theirs | themselves | |
Hence in modern English the dative form him took on the accusative functions of accusative hine [hinə].
See also
References
- ^ Peter S Baker, Introduction to Old English Archived 10 April 2007 at the Wayback Machine, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003).
- ^ Greville Corbett, Gender, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
- ^ Patricia T. O'Conner; Stewart Kellerman (21 July 2009). "All-Purpose Pronoun". The New York Times.
Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, Longman, 1985.
External links
- William Malone Baskervill and James Witt Sewel, An English Grammar, 1896.
- 'He', The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth edition, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000)..