Dative Pronouns

[John Hewson]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
On Mon, 20 Jul 1998, Richard Hogg wrote:
 
> Also of possible interest is the English phenomenon called "pronoun
> exchange" by the late Ossi Ihalainen, which gives sentences such as:
>         Her (SUBJ) told I (OBJ)
> Such forms are traceable throughout western England and in a few
> varieties living forms remain even in this decade. See Ihalainen in
> Cambridge History Vol. 5 pp.230-1, together with a number of his
> articles on Somerset and West Country dialect. As Ihalainen points
> out, it is probable that "you" is the descendant of the old
> accusative/dative pronoun, which replaced nominative "ye" under
> complex circumstances.
 
In the regional dialects of Britain there is a good deal of free variation
in the use of subject pronouns: one frequently hears "us" as a subject
form, for example.
 
Ihailen, as may be seen in the Cambridge History volume reference above,
was clearly not aware, however, that subject pronouns "I, he, she", etc,
are only used in direct object position when the D.O. is stressed, so that
there is a minimal pair
 
                1.      He SEES me
                2.      He sees I
 
where the object pronoun in (1) is unaccentuated, while that in (2) is
stressed. It is common to hear speakers switching back and forth between
the stressed and the unstressed versions.
 
                3.      He sees I, and I sees HE, and I says to 'un...
 
Here 'un is a direct descendant of OE masc. sg. acc. "hine", which became
generalized for both acc. and dative usage in Wessex. Where the verb is
stressed, one would normally get, consequently
 
                4.      I SEES 'un
 
This use of the stressed and unstressed forms of nominatives for two
different functions would seem to stem from the need to replace a clitic,
for expressive purposes, by a disjunctive pronominal form that can be
stressed.
 
We can see such usage leading to split paradigms in Romance
 
                5.      French MOI, TOI, LUI (stressed) vs. me, te, le
 
What is of interest here is the development of the LUI vs. le pair, where
"le" is from Latin acc. illu(m), and "lui" from dat. illi by analogy with
L. cui "to whom". The form "lui" is now singular dative for both genders,
and is also used as a stressed direct object (replacing or
reinforcing clitic "le"). The stressed paradigm (MOI, TOI, LUI, etc) has
taken on a quasi nominal function ("Le moi est haissible"), so that LUI
can, for expressive purposes, be used as a subject, when the subject needs
to be stressed.
 
                6.      LUI est parti hier
                        HE left yesterday
                        Il est parti hier
                        He left yesterday
 
The LUI used here is in origin a dative form used as a nominative, but
only in exceptional circumstances, since subject is not the normal
function of such a form; LUI is the pronominal form that is required after
prepositions: avec moi, pour toi, de lui, etc., since the clitic forms
(me, te, se, le) can only be used with verbs, never with prepositions.
What we are looking at is a pronoun with quasi nominal function, that like
all other French nouns, can be used as either subject or object of the
verb, but only in the third person (MOI, TOI cannot be used as subjects
without their corresponding clitics je, tu).
 
 
Since there are often different personal pronouns with different
functions, one has to be careful to go beyond the data of surface usage in
the search for a dative form that has been transformed into a nominative.
I think as well that the use of YOU as both subject and object form
is a simple case of levelling, rather than the development of a dative/
accusative form into a nominative. YOU, in acquiring nominative function,
has not ceased to be used as a dative/ accusative.
 
 
John Hewson, FRSC                               tel: (709)737-8131
University Research Professor                   fax: (709)737-4000
Memorial University of Newfoundland
St. John's NF, CANADA A1B 3X9