Re: A curious fact concerning English Second Person Pronouns

I believe this was coincidental in origin (note also that the plural
of the first person is "we" nominative while the singular is "me"
oblique, athough the other pair in that person has no such
relationship).  However, the fact that "ye" sounded like "thee" did
probably contribute to the disappearance of case marking in the second
person, which is AFAIK universal in all modern English 'lects, most of
which use "you" as both nom and obl, some of which use "tha", and some
of which use "thee".  Not sure if "thou" has survived unchanged
anywhere...


On 6/6/06, Peter Bleackley <Peter.Bleackley@...> wrote:
> Consider this
>
>         singular        plural
> Nom     thou            ye
> Acc     thee            you
>
> In each word the onset gives number and the coda gives case. But the
> meanings of the case endings are reversed between the numbers!
>
> Accusative = (ee xor plural)
>
> Pete
>

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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