1. The Independent forms of the pronouns, which are also used predicatively, are min (pl. mine); oure, oures, ours; thin (pl. thine); youre, youres, yours; hire, heres, hers; here, heres, theirs.

2. The Midland dialect seems to have borrowed the forms oures, youres, &c., from the Northern dialect, in which oure, youre, &c., are not used.

3. The dative cases of the pronouns are used after wel, wo, loth, leef (lief); with impersonal verbs, as 'me mette,' 'him thoughte'; and with some verbs of motion, as 'goth him,' 'he rydeth him.'

4. The pronoun thow is sometimes joined to the verb, as schaltow, wiltow.

5. The Interrogative pronouns are who (gen. whos; dat. and acc. whom), which and what.

(a) Which has often the sense of what, what sort of :

'Which a miracle ther bifel anoon.'

(Knightes Tale, 1817; see Prol. 1. 40.)

It is not used exactly as a relative, as in modern English, but is joined with that; as 'Hem whiche that wepith;''His love the which that he oweth.'

(b) What is occasionally used for why (cp. Lat. quid, Ger.

'What sholde he studie and make himselven wood?'

'What sholde I alday of his wo endyte?'

(Prol. 1. 184.)

(Knightes Tale, 1. 522.)

6. That is a relative pronoun, but it is often used with the personal pronouns, in the following manner :

(a) That he who.

'A knight ther was, and that a worthy man,
That fro the tyme that he first 'began

To ryden out, he loved chivalrye.'

(b) That his whose.

(Prol. 11. 43-45.)

'Al were they sore y-hurt, and namely oon,
That with a spere was thirled his brest-boon.'
(Knightes Tale, ll. 1851-52.)

(c) That him whom.

=

I saugh to-day a corps yborn to chirche
That now on Monday last I saugh him wirche.'
(Milleres Tale, 1. 243.)

This construction occurs in A.S. writers. Cp. Thæt næs ná eówres pances ac thurh God, þE ic purh HIS willan hider ásend was = that was not of your own accord but through God, through whose will I was sent hither. (Gen. xlv. 8.)

=

7. The words who and who so are used indefinitely; as, ‘As who seith' as one says; 'Who so that can him rede' (Prol. 1. 741)=if that any one can read him.

8. Me and men are used like the French on, English one. Me, which must be distinguished from the dative me, was in use as an indefinite pronoun much later than is usually considered by English grammarians :

And stop me (= let any one stop) his dice, you are a villaine.' (Lodge, Wits Miserie.')

=

I. In some manuscripts the t of the 2nd person sing. present tense is sometimes dropped, as in the Harl. MS. dos: dost, has = hast. This has been considered by some as a mere clerical error; but in the East Midland dialects, there was a tendency to drop the t, probably arising from the circumstance of the 2nd person of the verb in the Northumbrian dialects terminating always in -es.

2. Verbs of Saxon origin, which have d or t for the last letter of the root (and one or two that have s), sometimes keep the contracted form in the 3rd sing. as sit sitteth, sits; writ= writeth, writes ; fint=findeth, finds; halt-holdeth, holds; rist= riseth, rises; stontstondeth=stands.

3. We often find -th instead of -eth, as spekth=speaketh a. 4. In some MSS. of the Cant. Tales, the plural of the present indicative occasionally ends in -eth (-th), which was the

In this edition I have often given the full form of the preterite in -ede, although the MSS. mostly write -ed; but in the best MS. of Chaucer's prose translation of Boethius the preterite ends in ede (-ed, -te), very seldom in -ed (-d, -t). Either the medial or the final e was frequently dropped. This contraction occasionally takes place in the imperative plural. See Nonne Prestes Tale, 1. 620, where read Tak'th.

ordinary inflexion for all persons in the Old English Southern dialects.

'And over his heed ther schyneth two figures.'

(Knightes Tale, 1. 1185, Harl. MS.) 5. There are two other classes of the weak conjugation which form the past tense by -de or -të. To the first class belong

Some few verbs have a change of vowel in the past tense; as

If the root ends in d or t, preceded by another consonant, ë

1. These verbs have a change of vowel in the past tense, and the past participle ends in -en or -ë; as sterven, to die; pret. starf; p.p. storven or storve. (See Participles, p. xxxix. 3.)

2. Some few strong verbs take the inflexions of the weak verbs, so that we have double forms for the past tense, as—

Slepen, sleep, slep, and slep-te.
Crepen, creep, crep, and crep-te.
Wepen, weep. wep, and wep-te.

3. The 1st and 3rd persons of the past indicative of strong verbs do not take an -e in the singular number; the addition of this syllable turns them into plurals. Cf. 6 (below.)

4. The East Midland dialect, in the Early English period, dropped the -e in the 2nd person past indicative; and we find in Chaucer 'thou bar,'' thou spak,' 'thou dronk' (O. E. thou ber-e, thou spek-e, thou drunk-e),=thou barest, thou spakest, thou drankest. But these forms may be due merely to the scribes.

Occasionally we find -est, as in modern English; as bygonnest, knewest, &c.

5. The plural indicative ends in -en or -e.

6. Some few verbs, as in the older stages of the language, have a change of vowel in the past tense plural, as—

1. The present subjunctive, singular number, terminates in -e, the plural in -en; the past (of weak verbs) in -ede, -de, -te, the plural in -eden, -den, -ten, through all persons.

2. Such forms as speke we, go we,= let us speak, let us go.

IMPERATIVE MOOD.

1. Verbs conjugated like loven and tellen have the 2nd person sing. imperative in -e; as love thou, telle thou. All other verbs have properly no final e, as her thou'=hear thou,‘ches thou' =choose thou.

6

2. The plural terminates usually in -eth, but sometimes the -th is dropped.

INFINITIVE MOOD.

The infinitive ends in -en or -e; as speken, speke, to speak. The -n was dropped at a very early period in the Southern English dialect of the fourteenth century, and -e is preferred to -en.