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I (pronounced /aɪ/) is the first-person, singular personal pronoun (subject case) in Modern English. It is used to refer to one's self and is usually capitalized, although other pronouns, like he or she are not capitalized.

Etymology

English I originates from Old English (OE) ic. This transformation from ic to i had happened by about 1137 in Northern England. Capitalisation of the word began around 1250 to clarify the single letter as constituting a full word: writers and copyists began to use a capital I because the lower-case letter was hard to read, and sometimes mistaken for part of the previous or succeeding word. This practice was already established by the introduction of movable type in the mid-15th century, and was also still considered to improve readability.^{[citation needed]} Its predecessor ic had in turn originated from the continuation of Proto-Germanic ik, and ek; ek was attested in the Elder Futhark inscriptions (in some cases notably showing the variant eka; see also ek erilaz). Linguists assume ik to have developed from the unstressed variant of ek.

Germanic cognates are: Old Frisian ik, Old Norse ek (Danish, Norwegian jeg, Swedish jag, Icelandic ég), Old High German ih (German ich) and Gothic ik.

The Proto-Germanic root came, in turn, from the Proto Indo-European language (PIE). The reconstructed PIE pronoun is *egō, egóm, with cognates including Sanskrit aham, Hittite uk, Latin ego, Greek ἐγώ egō and Old Slavonic azъ.

The oblique forms are formed from a stem *me- (English me), the plural from *wei- (English we), the oblique plural from *ns- (English us).

Tables

1. ^a b The possessive forms were used as genitives before words beginning with a vowel sound and letter h (e.g. thine eyes, mine heire). Otherwise, "my" and "thy" is attributive (my/thy goods) and "mine" and "thine" are predicative (they are mine/thine). Shakespeare pokes fun at this custom with an archaic plural for eyes when the character Bottom says "mine eyen" in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
2. ^a b From the early Early Modern English period up until the 17th century, his was the possessive of the third person neuter it as well as of the 3rd person masculine he. Genitive "it" appears once in the 1611 King James Bible (Leviticus 25:5) as groweth of it owne accord.
3.  Theyr was sometimes used as the genitive form of they. It appears in the famous soliloquy To be, or not to be in the Second Quarto of Hamlet by William Shakespeare as theyr currents.

See also

• English grammar
• English personal pronouns
• Grammar
• Personal pronouns
• Pronouns
• Self

References

• Gaynesford, M. de I: The Meaning of the First Person Term, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006.

External links

• Video: Saul Kripke, The First Person, January 2006 — an analytic philosophical perspective. 70 minutes, hosted by Google video. [Kripke is sick with bronchitis and doesn't always speak into the microphone.]