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July 30

Historical third-person plural personal pronoun

In general, when did "hie" and its forms get replaced by "they" and its forms? I was under the impression that "they" was Norse, introduced during the period of the Norse invasion of England (see Danelaw), and thus established in English before the Conquest. But I just now had reason to look for "Adam lay ybounden" (15th century) and discovered that one stanza reads And al was for an appil, an appil that he tok. As clerkes fyndyn wretyn in here book. Were forms like "here" or "hire" still common in place of "their" in the 15th century, whether in (the formerly Danish) East Anglia or elsewhere? English personal pronouns doesn't really discuss archaic or obsolete forms, except "thee" and "ye". Nyttend (talk) 11:44, 30 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

There's a chart in the Wikipedia article titled Middle English that seems to imply that both the Old-English-derived "heore/her" forms were in use alongside the Norse-derived "þeir" forms. This article I found here notes that the "their" form did not become prevalent over the "hire" form until Early Modern English. Also, because of non-standard spelling, it notes that hire was also sometimes used for the singular feminine possessive. So, it looks like the "hire" (and variants) were probably common enough until the 15th century, when the transition to Early Modern English took place, at least according to that source. However, according to this source, the "th..." forms of the third person from Scandinavian were already present in Middle English. So... --Jayron 32 11:59, 30 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Nyttend -- a form of the Old English plural pronoun survives into modern English as the so-called contraction "'em" (as in "Don't kick 'em while they're down")... AnonMoos (talk) 15:26, 30 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Does it? I had always presumed "'em" was a shortening of "them". Do you have somewhere I can read about this? --Jayron 32 15:33, 30 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I think Anthony Burgess mentions it in his memoirs. The OED has "colloquial and regional after the late 18th cent. The objective (originally the dative) case of the third person plural pronoun, originally corresponding to the subjective hi pron". DuncanHill (talk) 16:13, 30 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that DuncanHill --Jayron 32 12:42, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Jayron32 -- You can look it up in standard reference works. Anyway, [ð] deletion isn't really a thing in the history of the English language, while there's plenty of [h] deletion (starting with "it" among the pronouns)... AnonMoos (talk) 17:34, 30 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

"Look it up yourself" is hardly the way things are done at the reference desk. In general, when responding to people's queries, our job here is to provide them those references when they ask for them, and not say "look it up yourself", without providing anywhere for them to look it up. In the future, please do try to provide references. --Jayron 32 12:42, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank yunz (OED entry 232195) for the help. I had no clue that any form of "hie" had survived in any manner, but an OED search for "em" found entry 85779, which contains the bit Duncan quotes. (I can't easily provide a good link, since I'm depending on EZproxy, which changes the link significantly. Just find a random item and replace its entry number with the ones I gave.) Good point on "h" deletion, which as AnonMoos notes was along the lines of "hit" in the OE period, rather than "it". Or today's colloquial "im", e.g. "I'm gonna hit im while e's down". Nyttend (talk) 02:14, 1 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I thought proper was an adjective

Is it common to use "proper" as a noun meaning the main part of a country?? An example is the Denmark article calls Denmark the Denmark proper. Georgia guy (talk) 15:04, 30 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Saying "Denmark proper" is perfectly fine, and I wouldn't call "proper" there a noun. It's more like an adjective, and it doesn't mean the main part, it means the whole country, i.e. Jutland plus the rest. --Viennese Waltz 15:09, 30 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Actually Denmark proper does mean the main part, which excludes the autonomous constituent countries Greenland and the Faroes, which are part of the kingdom. Loraof (talk) 16:10, 30 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

OED calls this sense an adjective "As postmodifier, designating the part or aspect of a larger entity that is most accurately so called.". DuncanHill (talk) 15:12, 30 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

There's nothing particularly wrong with having an adjective follow a noun (many languages it is the usual way things are done; many classes of French adjectives, for example, also come after the noun they are modifying). In English, the usage has become mostly idiomatic; in certain set phrases like "Murder most foul" and "court martial" and the aforementioned "country proper". The fact that they come after, however, does not determine that they are not adjectives. It is not the order, but rather the function of a word that determines its grammatical class. In the case of "Denmark proper", the "proper" part modifies "Denmark"; it lets us know there are other kinds of Denmarks rather than saying that (rather nonsensically) there are various kinds of propers of which Denmark proper is one kind. That's how we know that "proper" acts as an adjective here. Postpositive adjective is an article that the OP may be interested in; besides discussing idiomatic examples, it includes more grammatically natural examples from English like "We need someone strong", where "strong" is an adjective modifying "someone". --Jayron 32 16:04, 30 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Out of pure curiosity: Who and what is excluded when referring to Denmark PROPER? Is not there a need for an article on Denmark IMPROPER?

Not to mention Sweden / Norway and Iceland Improper. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 16:47, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

If you don't like the term, what would you call it instead? Maybe an alternative term could be "Metropolitan Denmark", in the manner of Metropolitan France? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.254.202.82 (talk) 17:16, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Our Mainland article says under Mainland#Prominent uses of the term mainland: "Mainland Denmark, as opposed to overseas parts of the Danish Realm; geographically, Denmark proper consists of a continental portion called Jutland and nearby Danish Isles. Alansplodge (talk) 17:22, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM: Thankfully, Wikipedia has an article titled Denmark that contains the following explanation of the terminology "Denmark proper": "Denmark proper consists of a peninsula, Jutland, and an archipelago of 443 named islands,[N 2][10] with the largest being Zealand, Funen and the North Jutlandic Island." That same article also explains other parts of the Kingdom of Denmark which are not part of Denmark proper, "The Kingdom of Denmark also comprises two autonomous constituent countries in the North Atlantic Ocean: the Faroe Islands and Greenland." In the case of Denmark, the issue is that the word Denmark has two meanings, one being "Jutland, Zealand, Funen, and the associated islands" and the other being "All of that, plus Greenland and the Faroe Islands". In situations where such a distinction is necessary (it isn't always necessary), then one can use the phrase "Denmark proper" to include only the section historically thought of as Denmark, while one can use other easily understood distinctions such as "Greater Denmark" or "The Kingdom of Denmark", etc. to include the other areas as well. Other countries may have different terminology for similar concepts (for example "Metropolitan France" or "The Fifty States" for the U.S.), though the term "xxxx proper" is used in many geographic contexts where there is a distinction to be made between two different definitions (i.e. between a city and it's metropolitan area, etc.) See, for example, Definition 6 here at Merriam-Webster or Definition 1.1 here in the online abridged Oxford. In general, the post-positive use of "proper" is basically equivalent to the Latin term sensu stricto. I hope that helps clarify some of your confusions. --Jayron 32 17:50, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Could follow the UK's model, where the country proper is just "the United Kingdom" and the UK plus all its dodgy offshore tax havens is "The United Kingdom, Crown Dependencies and British Overseas Territories". – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 20:31, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Except the Crown Dependencies and BOT's are not parts of the United Kingdom, but the Faroes and Greenland are part of the Kingdom of Denmark. DuncanHill (talk) 20:48, 31 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]