Editing Middle English (section)

===Pronouns===
Middle English [[personal pronoun]]s were mostly developed from [[Old English pronouns|those of Old English]], with the exception of the third person plural, a borrowing from [[Old Norse]] (the original Old English form clashed with the third person singular and was eventually dropped). Also, the nominative form of the feminine third person singular was replaced by a form of the [[demonstrative]] that developed into {{lang|enm|sche}} (modern ''she''), but the alternative {{lang|enm|heyr}} remained in some areas for a long time.

As with nouns, there was some inflectional simplification (the distinct Old English [[dual (grammatical number)|dual]] forms were lost), but pronouns, unlike nouns, retained distinct nominative and accusative forms. Third person pronouns also retained a distinction between accusative and dative forms, but that was gradually lost: The masculine {{lang|nme|hine}} was replaced by {{lang|enm|him}} south of the [[River Thames]] by the early 14th century, and the neuter dative {{lang|enm|him}} was ousted by ''it'' in most dialects by the 15th.<ref>Fulk, R.D., ''An Introduction to Middle English'', Broadview Press, 2012, p. 65.</ref>

The following table shows some of the various Middle English pronouns. Many other variations are noted in Middle English sources because of differences in spellings and pronunciations at different times and in different dialects.<ref>See {{cite book |last=Stratmann |first=Francis Henry |year=1891 |title=A Middle-English dictionary |url=https://archive.org/details/middleenglishdic00stra |place=London |publisher = Oxford University Press |ol=7114246M }} and {{cite book |last1=Mayhew |first1=AL |last2=Skeat |first2=Walter W |year=1888 |title=A Concise Dictionary of Middle English from A.D. 1150 to 1580 |place=Oxford |publisher=Clarendon Press |url= http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10625/10625-h/main.html}}</ref>

{{Middle English personal pronouns (table)}}