중세영어 3인칭 단수 여성대명사 ' She ' 에 관한 고찰

Abstract

The Middle English third person singular feminine pronoun `she` has aroused great controversy among linguists since it has the phoneme / ∫/ which its correspondent Old English `he￣o had not. In general three theories on the origin of `she￣` have been argued. One argument is that it has been originated from the Old English personal pronoun `he￣o` . Another is that it has developed from the Old English demonstrative pronoun `se￣o` . And the last is that it was borrowed from Scandinavian languages. These explanations of the emergence of the phoneme / ∫/ . of the feminine nominative pronoun have been unsatisfactory. They have attributed its change to a morpho-specific palatalization process or extralinguistc hypotheses that ignore historical or social backgrounds of its appearance. Since extralinguistic factors have influenced the historical dircction of linguistic change, the relation of the feminine and masculine pronoun shoud be considered in regards to the woman` s position in the linguistic community. The position of woman in Middle English period is quite diffetent from that in Old English period. Woman began to play an important role in literature and life in Middle English period. Thus the near-homophony of the feminine and masculine personal pronoun( `he￣o` , `he￣` ) and the position of woman necessitated the replacement of personal pronoun( `he￣o` ) with demonstrative pronoun ( `se￣o` ) which functioned as personal pronoun. This demonstrative `se￣o` has become the Middle English `she￣` .