Renewal of Grammatical Forms in the History of English

Abstract

[Abstract] In the development of English, new relative pronouns (whwords) were introduced, while the relative pronouns used in Old English (se/seþe) underwent various restrictions of morphological nature (case, gender and number marking), thus tending to become progressively less frequently used. This paper attempts to describe the distribution of pronominal relativizers in Old and Middle English and reconstruct the conditions for their renewal.