previous next

PRONOUNS, PERSONAL. Pronoun for pronominal adjective

Pronoun for pronominal adjective. The pronominal adjectives his, their, being originally possessive inflections of he, they, &c., were generally used in E. E. possessively or subjectively, i.e. "his wrongs" would naturally mean then "the wrongs done by him," not "to him." Hence, for objective genitives, "of" was frequently introduced, a usage which sometimes extended to subjective genitives. Hence

“The kindred of him hath been flesh'd upon us.
”

“Tell thou the lamentable tale of me.
”

“The native mightiness and fate of him.
”

“Against the face of them.” Psalm xxi. 12.

It is used, perhaps, for antithesis in

“Let her be made
As miserable by the death of him
As I am made by my poor lord and thee.
”

“O world, thou wast the forest to this heart,
And this indeed, O world, the heart of thee.
”

A Shakespearean Grammar. Edwin Abbott Abbott. London and New York. Macmillan and Company. 1870.

NSF, NEH: Digital Libraries Initiative, Phase 2 provided support for entering this text.

This text was converted to electronic form by professional data entry and has been proofread to a medium level of accuracy.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: