First published in 2003, this is a study of the syntactic behaviour of personal pronoun subjects and the indefinite pronoun man, in Old English. It focuses on differences in word order as compared to full noun phrases. In generative work on Old English, noun phrases have usually divided into two categories: 'nominal' and 'pronominal'. The latter category has typically been restricted to personal pronouns, but despite striking similarities to the behaviour of nominals there has been good reason to believe that man should be grouped with personal pronouns. This book explores investigations carried out in conjunction with the aid of the Toronto Corpus, which confirmed this hypothesis.
A personal pronoun must be of the same number, gender and person as the noun it stands for. John is a good boy. He loves and respects his parents and teachers. (Here the pronoun he is of the same number, gender and person as the noun John.) Alice is my sister. She lives abroad. (Here the pronoun she is of the same number, gender and person as the noun Alice.) The students worked hard. Their teacher praised them. (Here the plural pronoun them is of the same number, gender and person as the plural noun students.)...
