THE PERSONAL PRONOUNS.
§ 219. _I_, _we_, _us_, _me_, _thou_, _ye_.--These constitute the true
personal pronouns. From _he_, _she_, and _it_, they differ in being
destitute of gender.
These latter words are demonstrative rather than personal, so that there
are in English true personal pronouns for the first two persons only.
§ 220. The usual declension of the personal pronouns is exceptionable. _I_
and _me_, _thou_ and _ye_, stand in no etymological relations to each
other. The true view of the words is, that they are not irregular but
defective. _I_ has no _oblique_, and _me_ no nominative case. And so it is
with the rest.
§ 221. _You_.--As far as the practice of the present mode of speech is
concerned, the word _you_ is a _nominative_ form; since we say _you move_,
_you are moving_, _you were speaking_.
Why should it not be treated as such? There is no absolute reason why it
should not. The Anglo-Saxon form for _you_ was _eow_, for _ye_, _ge_.
Neither bears any sign of case at all, so that, form for form, they are
equally and indifferently nominative and accusative. Hence, it, perhaps, is
more logical to say that a certain form (_you_), is used _either_ as a
nominative or accusative, than to say that the accusative case is used
instead of a nominative. It is clear that _you_ can be used instead of _ye_
only so far as it is nominative in power.
_Ye_.--As far as the evidence of such expressions as _get on with ye_ is
concerned, the word _ye_ is an accusative form. The reasons why it should
or should not be treated as such are involved in the previous paragraph.
§ 222. _Me_.--carrying out the views just laid down, and admitting _you_ to
be a nominative, or _quasi_-nominative case, we may extend the reasoning to
the word _me_, and call it also a secondary or equivocal nominative;
inasmuch as such phrases as _it is me_ = _it is I_ are common.
Now to call such expressions incorrect English is to assume the point. No
one says that _c'est moi_ is bad French, and that _c'est je_ is good.
§ 223. _Caution._--Observe, however, that the expression _it is me_ = _it
is I_ will not justify the use of _it is him_, _it is her_ = _it is he_ and
_it is she_. _Me_, _ye_, _you_, are what may be called _indifferent forms_,
i.e., nominative as much as accusative, and accusative as much as
nominative. _Him_ and _her_, on the other hand, are not indifferent. The -m
and -r are respectively the signs of cases other than the nominative.
§ 224. Again: the reasons which allow the form _you_ to be considered as a
nominative plural, on the strength of its being used for _ye_, will not
allow it to be considered a nominative singular on the strength of its
being used for _thou_.
§ 225. In phrases like _you are speaking_, &c., even when applied to a
single individual, the idea is really plural; in other words, the courtesy
consists in treating _one_ person as _more than one_, and addressing him as
such, rather than in using a plural form in a singular sense. It is certain
that, grammatically considered, _you_ = _thou_ is a plural, since the verb
with which it agrees is plural:--_you are speaking_, not _you art
speaking_.
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