The rise of standard I (< ME ich): A contribution to the study of functional change in English
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Date
2014
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Adam Mickiewicz University
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Abstract
In its post-Norman Conquest development the Old English first person personal pronoun ic underwent
transformations which, following the loss of the consonant, finally yielded the contemporary
capitalised form I, contrasting with other Germanic languages, which retain a velar sound in
the corresponding pronoun. The rather complex change of ich to I involves a loss of the final
velar/palatal consonant, lengthening of the original short vowel, and capitalisation of the pronoun.
It is argued here that the use of the capital letter was a consequence of vowel lengthening subsequent
to the loss of the consonant. This seems to be confirmed by the observation that forms
retaining a consonant are extremely rarely capitalised. The data adduced in the present paper will
help verify as precisely as possible the distribution of the forms of that pronoun in Middle English
dialects in order to determine to what extent the changes were functionally interdependent. The
evidence comes from the Innsbruck Corpus of Middle English Prose.
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Keywords
pronoun, first person, I, ich, Old English, Middle English, functional change
Citation
Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, vol. 49.3 (2014), pp. 29-41