How 'they' conquered England

Contents

1 Where they came from

2 ‘They’ as a third-person personal pronoun
2.1 The Old English system
2.1.1 Relevant changes in the English language
2.2 The Old Norse system

3 Sources
3.1 Written records of Old English
3.2 Written records of Old Norse
3.3 Language contact
3.4 Pronominal borrowing
3.5 The contact between Scandinavian and English
3.6 The combined paradigm of northern Middle English
3.7 them spreading southward

4 The integration process of they, them, and their in the English language

5 References

1 Where they came from

Walking through the streets of York several years ago, I was welcomed by a fierce-looking crowd of Vikings running towards me. In my case, though, the horde was just a group of actors commemorating regional history. At the end of the 8th century, Scandinavian Viking armies conquered different territories in Europe. England was attacked by Danish Vikings starting in the 780s^[1]. After several years of mere raiding, 851 marked their first stay during winter. The Danish conquests developed into a permanent settlement in some parts of England and finally led to a treaty signed in 886 between a Danish leader and the king of Wessex, then central power of England. The treaty acknowledged the Danish rule over Northeast England, the territory later being called Danelaw^[2]. The Danish influence ceased until 954^[3], but linguistic evidence of this contact with the Danes remains incorporated even in Modern English^[4]. One remarkable feature of this evidence^[5] is the English system of the third-person plural personal pronouns they, them, and their, whose development shall be examined more closely in this paper.^[6]

2 ‘They’ as a third-person personal pronoun

In Modern English, ‘they’ plays an important role. On one hand, it can be used as a generic synonym for ‘people’^[7], often leading to an imprecise definition of who “they” actually are. On the other hand, it has served as a common-gender substitution for the masculine third-person singular pronoun ‘he’ when speaking of a person of unknown sex^[8]. Most importantly and originally, however, ‘they’ has been a personal pronoun in the plural of the third person.

The reasons for the use of pronouns are mainly economical, for abbreviation^[9]. An aforementioned object is referred to by a shorter word, the pronoun. Following this approach of linguistic economy, it is important to remark the difference between suppletion and grammaticalization, or between condensation and expansion^[10]. Grammaticalization mainly works through inflection, meaning that rules of addition, e.g. of affixes, are employed in a regularized way. This helps understanding an unknown word through its morphological structure, but usually leads to longer words. Suppletion describes the use of an irregular feature. A suppletive lexical item cannot be explained through application of morphological rules, but has to be learned on its own. In the case of a language feature used as frequently as pronouns, it can become economically reasonable to learn an irregular lexical item instead of applying a rule. This argument can be supported with the help of irregular and regular verbs: Most of the irregular verbs are very frequently used, as in the case of be and its irregular forms am and was or of go and went^[11]. Scarcely used verbs, by contrast, will be subject to regularization quickly.

2.1 The Old English system

Figure 1: Third-person personal pronoun paradigm in Old English^[12]

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In Old English, the different forms of the third-person personal pronouns share an initial h as common “base”^[13] and marker for usage of the third person. No gender distinction is given for the plural, it can thus be seen as a simple opposition to the singular. Altogether, nine^[14] different forms can be distinguished – filling sixteen different slots. There are thus several indistinct, homonymous cases. Indistinct forms are masculine and neuter genitive his; as for dative him, it is shared by masculine, neuter, and plural; nominative and accusative are drawn together in neuter hit. hire is used as genitive of feminine or plural and as feminine dative. Probably the most critical situation arises for hie, which can be feminine or plural accusative or plural nominative, but which at the same time is nearly homonymous with the feminine nominative heo and the masculine nominative he respectively – since vowels can be affected by sound shifts most easily, this situation could be described as ‘bearing formal ambiguities’ or as ‘designed to become “chaotic”^[15] ’.

2.1.1 Relevant changes in the English language

The role of the third-person personal pronouns has evolved^[16] in the development of English, and its grammatical importance has increased. In Old English, the grammatical gender was of importance, going together with the use of inflections as markers for case, number and gender in adjectives and pronouns according to the equally inflected noun. More importantly for the case of the personal pronouns, verbs were marked in person and number through suffixation to accordance with the subject. So even if the personal pronoun was not marked sufficiently due to homonomy, the verb would clarify the situation.^[17] Due to phonological changes, notably the reduction of the suffixes to [ə] and later to Ø (zero-inflection), the verb ceased being marked in person and number^[18]. In this new situation, using a personal pronoun with a homonymous potential could lead to misunderstanding who was actually meant. This will be the central argument for the communicative need for a distinction in the following chapters.

2.2 The Old Norse system

Figure 2: Third-person personal pronoun paradigm in Old Norse^[19]

illustration not visible in this excerpt

Compared to the Old English one, the Old Norse system of third-person personal pronouns is more differentiated. Sixteen different forms can be distinguished and the forms are also qualitatively more different. A systematic division splits the masculine and feminine singular forms with the h - base from the neuter and plural forms sharing a Þ- base. This paradigm thus introduces a strong opposition between the animate and inanimate forms^[20]. The forms with Þ- derived from demonstrative pronouns^[21]. A differentiation according to gender is given for the plural in the nominative and the accusative case. These cases, again are only lexically distinguished from each other for the feminine singular and the masculine plural forms.

3 Sources

Analyzing the language contact between Old English and Old Norse is a difficult matter for various reasons. Hardly any contemporary written records of the dialects in question exist. The situation deteriorates due to the fact that English itself ceases being used as a literary language after the Norman Conquest and research thus lacks records from the time between roughly 1066 and 1150^[22]. By then, the time of English-Norse bilingualism and the use of Norse as a language with prestige was over^[23]. This is the reason why sometimes explanations are given for an impact of Old Norse on Middle English – no sources proving the direct impact on Old English are available^[24].

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^[1] For the introductory part on Viking history, see Nielsen 1998: 165-169.

^[2] OE Denalagu, see Thomason/Kaufman 1988: 266.

^[3] For the purpose of this paper, there is no evidence that a second period of Viking influence in the 11th century played a role since it did not lead to any settlement and should have stayed without considerable linguistic impact (see Nielsen 1998: 169). According to Thomason/Kaufman (1988: 267), Norse probably was spoken for two more generations after 955.

^[4] The Danish spoken by the new settlers is named Anglo-Danish according to Werner 1991: 380, a dialect of Old Norse. In this paper, Scandinavian and Old Norse shall be treated as synonyms (as in Thomason/Kaufman 1988: 358).

^[5] Altogether, according to Nielsen (1998: 183), there are about 600 to 900 Scandinavian loans in Modern English.

^[6] Researchers often introduce two more problems into the discussion of the questions treated in this paper, treating the history of the third-person pronoun form of the feminine singular she and the introduction of the third person -(e)s as regular verbal suffix. These questions will not be part of this work.

^[7] See Merriam-Webster 2003: 1298.

^[8] See Merriam-Webster 2003: 1298.

^[9] See Werner 1991: 371. Looking at medieval literature, I consider any stylistic approach redundant for the purpose of this paper.

^[10] See Werner 1991: 370-371.

^[11] See Werner 1991: 378.

^[12] The data in the table are drawn from Nielsen 1998: 114-115 in a simplified form, referring to the style of Burrow and Turville-Petre (for an example, see Burrow/Turville-Petre 1996: 25). Due to the diversity of OE spelling and dialects, it can only offer exemplary forms.

^[13] See Werner 1991: 370.

^[14] Counting the plural genitive as distinct form.

^[15] Burrow/Turville-Petre 1992: 26, expression used for the situation in Middle English.

^[16] See Freeborn 1998: 68.

^[17] See Freeborn 1998: 69.

^[18] See Freeborn 1998: 70-71.

^[19] The data in the table are drawn from Gordon 1957: 294.

^[20] See Werner 1991: 377.

^[21] Gordon 1957: 294.

^[22] See Werner 1991: 380-381.

^[23] See Werner 1991: 381.

^[24] This obviously obscures the application of certain models for the explanation of the relationship between the peoples and thus between the speakers and their languages. For example, the algebraic model introduced by Ferguson (see McColl Millar 2005: 32) needs clear numbers of speakers and descriptions of the situation.