The Early History Of They

This book challenges the long-held theory that the English pronouns they, their, them are loanwords from Old Norse, arguing instead that the pronouns ultimately derive from the Old English demonstratives þā – þāra – þām. Based on the most comprehensive quantitative and qualitative analysis yet published of third-person plural personal pronoun usage in early English, the study presents evidence of morphosyntactic and phonological continuity from Old to Middl