The Old English Pronoun
There are several types of pronouns in OE: personal, possessive, demonstrative, interrogative, definite, indefinite, negative, and relative.
In OE, as in Gothic, there are besides singular and plural personal pronouns, also dual pronouns for the 1st and 2nd persons, which are used to refer to a pair of people, e.g. a married couple. All three persons and genders are preserved in the singular. OE has also four cases in the pronouns, still distinguishing the dative and accusative forms, which fell together by Middle English, producing what is in Modern English often referred to as the ‘objective case’.
As for possessive pronouns, these are derived from the genitive case of the personal pronouns of all persons and numbers. The possessive pronouns min, tin, uncer, incer, ure, eower are declined in the same way as strong adjectives. The possessive pronouns his, hire, and hiera are unchanged. Besides, there is the reflexive possessive pronoun sin, which is also declined in the way of strong adjectives.
There are two demonstrative pronouns in OE: se ‘that’ and tes ‘this’. The meaning of this pronoun is often weakened, so that it approaches the status of an article, e.g. se mann ‘the man’, seo sa ‘the sea’, tat lond ‘the land’.
The interrogative pronouns hwa ‘who’ and hwat ‘what’ have only singular forms.
The interrogative pronoun hwilc ‘which’ is declined as a strong adjective.
As for definite pronouns, here we find the pronouns gehwa ‘every’, gehwilc ‘each’, agter ‘either’, alc ‘each’, swilc ‘such’ and se ilca ‘the same’.
The negative pronouns nan and nanig, both meaning ‘no’, ‘none’, are also declined as strong adjectives.
