The Old English relative þe

Abstract

In current accounts the Old English relative þe is analysed in two radically different ways. The traditional view, inherited from the nineteenth-century grammarians, views the word as a relative pronoun, while the generative analysis, derived from some remarks of Jespersen on the ModE relative that, takes it to be a subordinating particle. The generativist view is based on the word's lack of morphological variation, whereas the older approach examines more generally the grammar of the word, noting that the invariable þe shares the typical nominal categories of number and case, functioning both as a singular and a plural and representing all the four cases of OE nominal elements. A further indication of the word's nominal status is its referential function, distinguishing between specific and generic reference. Against these clear facts, the lack of overt inflection is a minor idiosyncrasy, paralleled by the OE generic man/mon, whose pronominal status is widely agreed. Þe may have been a subordinating particle in origin, but by historical OE times it retained this function in relative clauses only after relative adverbs, having been reanalysed elsewhere either as a relative adverb itself, or, in its most frequent relative use, as a pronoun.