Going through the changes: The pronounshein middle English
- 1 January 1978
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis in Paper in Linguistics
- Vol. 11 (1-2) , 71-88
- https://doi.org/10.1080/08351817809389166
Abstract
Linguistic explanations of the emergence of the (s) forms of the feminine nominative pronoun and their gradual spread throughout the dialects of Middle English have been Inadequate. Linguists have attributed the change to a morpheme‐specific palatalization process, and reasoned that the near‐homophony of the feminine and masculine nominative forms necessitated such a sound shift. However, such analyses have not explained why distinctions between feminine and masculine pronominal forms were perceived as “fundamental to the working of the language”; (Strang, 1970).Keywords
This publication has 1 reference indexed in Scilit:
- Handbook of Middle EnglishPublished by Project MUSE ,1952