Proto-Indo-European pronouns

**Proto-Indo-European pronouns** have been reconstructed by modern linguists, based on similarities found across all descendant Indo-European languages. This article discusses the Late Indo-European forms, while also discussing the reconstructed PIE proper pronouns.

PIE pronouns, especially demonstrative pronouns, are difficult to reconstruct because of their variety in later languages.

## Grammatical categories

PIE pronouns inflected for case and number, and partly for gender.

## Personal Pronouns

Pronouns are used as nouns or as adjectives. They are divided into the
following seven classes:

1. Personal pronouns: as, **egṓ**, I.

2. Demonstrative pronouns: as, **so**, this, that.Reflexive pronouns: as, **se**/**swe**, himself.

3. Anaphoric pronouns: as, **is**, he.

4. Relative pronouns: as, **yos**, who.

5. Possessive pronouns: as, **ṇserós**, our.

6. Interrogative pronouns: as, **qis?** who?

7. Indefinite pronouns: as, **qis**, anyone.

Like adjectives, pronouns are declined for case and number and – except
for the personal and reflexive pronouns – for gender. Pronouns have a special
declension, differing from the nominal declension in several respects.

The personal pronouns of the first person are egō, I, weyes, we; of the second person, tū, thou, juwes, you. The personal pronouns of the third person -he, she, it, they - are wanting in Indo-European, an anaphoric (or even a demonstrative) being used instead. Late Indo-European had no personal pronouns for the third person, like most of the early dialects attested. For that purpose, a demonstrative was used instead; as, from ki, id, cf. Anatolian ki, Gmc. khi-, Lat. cis-, id, Gk. ekeinos, Lith. sis, O.C.S. si, etc. Since every finite verb form automatically indicates the ‘person’ of the verb, the nominal pronoun forms are already adequately marked. Therefore, pronouns are not generally used in verbal sentences; they might be used to mark insistence, though: esmi, I am; egō esmi, me, I am. In comparison with the orthotonic forms, often strengthened by particles, the special enclitic forms feature the minimal word stem and may be used in multiple cases.

Tonic forms are fully stressed (emphatic or contrastive), while enclitic are unstressed clitic object pronouns; these are clearly attested in Anatolian, Indo-Iranian, Greek, Balto-Slavic and Tocharian. They are mostly reduced versions of the full forms, and it is a common resource write them added to the preceding verb, cf. Hitt. -mu, O.Lith. -m(i).

The personal (non-reflexive) pronouns are declined as follows:

1) For 1st P. Nom. eghóm (<\*egh2-óm), emphatic from egṓ (<\*eg-óh2), cf. O.Ind. ahám,
Av. azəm, Hom.Gk. εγων, Ven. ehom.

2) Enclitics moi, mei, and t(w)oi, t(w)ei, are found in genitive, dative and locative, but
they are deliberately specialised in this table.

3) 1st sg. dative is often found reconstructed as mebhi/mebhei, following the 2nd pl.
tebhei/tebhi.

4) -es endings in nom. pl., ṇsmés, (j)usmés (<\*juswés?) attested in Att.-Ion. Greek and
Gothic.

5) An older ju(s)wes is probably behind the generally reconstructed nominative \*jūHs?
based on Balto-Slavic (and Germanic) forms, which would therefore be a contraction of the
original form (cf. Skt. yū-yám, Gk. u-meis, Lat. uōs, Cel. s-wīs, Goth. iz-wis<\*uz-wes?)

6) Zero-grade forms in jus- are also found as us- (from wes-? cf. Goth. izwis<\*uswes?).

7) Possibly accusatives jusmé<\*jusmēn<\*\*jusmens, and ṇsmé<\*ṇsmēn<\*\*ṇsmens.

8) Probably acc. pl. \*\*nos-m-s→nōns and \*\*wos-m-s→wōns.
8) Gen. n som, w som, is also attested.

9) Osc.-Umb., O.Ind. variant (orthotonic) series of Acc. Sg. in -m, as mēm(e), twēm,
tewem, usóm, s(w)ēm.

10) Dual forms (in \*-h1) are for the 1st nom. wē, acc. tonic ṇwé, enclitic nō; for the 2nd jū,
acc. tonic ūwé, enclitic wō.

## Demonstrative pronouns

The function of demonstrative pronouns, deixis, includes an indication of
position in relation to the person speaking. It is possible to express a maximum of
four (generally three) different degrees of distance; as, I-deixis (here, near the
speaker), thou-deixis (there, near the person addressed), that-deixis (there,
without a particular spatial reference), yonder-deixis (yonder, over there).
The demonstrative pronouns **so**, this, that, and **is**, this one, that one, “the
(just named)”, are used to point out or designate a person or thing for special
attention, either with nouns, as adjectives, or alone, as pronouns, and are declined
as follows:

so, sā, tod, *this, that*

Variants are observed in the attested dialects:

1) Nom. **so** (before all consonants)
is also found as sos in Old Indian, Greek and Gothic (in all other circumstances), and as se
in Latin (cf. Lat. ipse).

2) Nom. **sā** is found as **sja/sī** in Germanic and Celtic.

3) Nom. Pl. **tāi** is general, while **sāi** is restricted to some dialects, as Attic-Ionic Greek, possibly from
original fem. \**tā* and masc. \**to* (Meier-Brügger 2003). However, linguists like Beekes
(1995) or Adrados–Bernabé–Mendoza (1995-1998) reconstruct the nominative form in sas
the original Proto-Indo-European form.

4) Forms in tes- for the feminine singular forms
are supported by findings in Germanic, mainly (Beekes 1995). 5) The instrumental singular
forms are difficult to reconstruct with the available data, but the dative is also often
reconstructed as tosmei, along with **tosmōi**.

## Anaphoric pronouns

Anaphora is an instance of an expression referring to another, the weak
part of the deixis. In general, an anaphoric is represented by a pro-form or some
kind of deictic. They usually don’t have adjectival use, and are only used as mere
abbreviating substitutes of the noun. Old anaphorics were usually substituted in modern IE languages by
demonstratives.

They are usually integrated into the pronoun system with gender; only occasionally some of these anaphorics have been integrated into the personal pronouns system in Indo-European languages. Indo-European has a general anaphoric pronoun, is, ja/ī id, an olddemonstrative pronoun with basis on PIE root i- with ablaut ei-. PIE root **i**- is also the base for common relative jo-. Demonstrative **is**, **ya/ī**, **id**, with anaphoric value, “he/she/it”, in Italic (e.g. Lat. *is, ea, id*), Germanic (e.g. O.H.G. *ir*, *er/iz*, *ez*), Baltic (e.g. Lith. *jìs/jì*), Greek (e.g. Cypriot *ín*), Indo-Iranian (e.g. Skt. *ay-ám, iyám, i-d-ám*). The other demonstrative pronoun, so, sā, tod, functions as anaphoric too, but tends to appear leading the sentence, being its origin probably the relative. They are also used for the second term in comparisons.

Demonstrative **so**, **sā**, **tod** is also widely attested in Celtic (e.g. O.Ir. -so/-d), Italic
(e.g. Lat. is-te, is-ta, is-tud), Germanic (e.g. Goth. sa, sō, þata, O.Eng. sē, sēo, þæt, O.H.G.
der, die, daz), Baltic (e.g. Lith. tàs, tà), Slavic (e.g. O.C.S. tŭ, ta, to), Alb. ai, ajo, Gk. ho, hē,
tó, Indo-Iranian (e.g. Skt. sá, s , tát), Toch B se, sā, te, Arm. ay-d, Hitt. ta. Modern IE
languages have sometimes mixed both forms to create a single system, while others
maintain the old differentiation.

**is**, **ya**, **id**, *this one*, *that one* (also used for *he*, *she*, *it*)

Some emphatic forms exist; as, ejóm/eyóm for is, idóm for id; ijóm/iyóm for ja/ya.
Distance degrees in demonstratives might be classified as follows: kos, kā,
kod (also ghei-ke, ghāi-ke, ghod-ke), I-deixis, ‘this here’, oisos, oisā, oisom,
thou-deixis, ‘this there’, general so, tod, sā, that-deixis; elne, elnā, elnod,
yonder-deixis.

Deictic particles which appear frequently with demonstrative pronouns
include -ke/-ko-, here; -ne-/-no-, there; -wo-, away, again.

For the personal pronouns of the third person singular and plural, the anaphoric **i**- is used.

Deictic particles which appear frequently with demonstrative pronouns
include -ke/-ko-, here; -ne-/-no-, there; -wo-, away, again.
For PIE i-, se-, he, cf. Lat. is, O.Ind. saḥ, esaḥ, Hitt. apā, Goth. is, O.Ir. (h)í.
For -ke/-ko-, in (e)ke, ghei-(ke), this (here), cf. Hitt. kās, eda (def.), Lat. hic (<\*ghe-ike),
Goth. hi-, sa(h), O.Ir. sin, O.C.S. sĭ, si, se, Lith. šìs, ši. For ke-enos, cf. Gk. keĩnos (<\*ke-enos), O.N. hánn, hann, ‘he’; for au-, away, again, cf. Gk. houtos, O.Ind. a-sau, u-, Av. ava-, OCS. ovĭ…ovĭ. For se-, te-, in oi-se, is-te, ene, this (there), cf. Lat. iste, Gk. οιος (<\*oihos), O.Ind.
enam (clit.).

## Reflexive Pronouns

Reflexive pronouns are used in the accusative and the oblique cases to refer
to the subject of the sentence or clause in which they stand, meaning ‘(one)self’.
They do not have a nominative case, do not distinguish number, and can be used
with any of the three persons.

**se**, -self

 Gen.
 Abl.
 Dat.
 L.-I.

Particular IE languages show an old **swoi** and **swe**, cf. Gk. Lesb. ϝε. According to
J.T. Katz precisely this **swe** is regarded as ancient and **se** as secondary. In contrast, G.E.
Dunkel connects **se/soi**, which he considers more ancient, with the demonstrative
pronoun so. The reciprocals one another, each other, were expressed like the
distributives (v.s. §5.5.4), with the first member in the nominative, and the second
in the accusative (or other oblique case); as, **alyos alyom**, **onyos onyom**, etc.

## Possessive pronouns

From the bases of the personal pronouns, the oldest possessive pronouns were **mos**, mine, **ṇsmós**, ours, **twos**, thine, **usmós**, yours, **swos**, own. So e.g. in Gk. emós (<\*h1mós), ammos, *sós*, *ummos*, *hos*, Av. *ma-*, *θwa-*, O.Ind. *tva-*. Variants exist in tewós (as Gk. teϝós, Lat. tuus), sewós (as Gk. heϝós, Lat. suus), explained as neologisms, but “which may well be as early as Late PIE” (Sihler 1995).
The common Late Indo-European possessives were formed from the same bases with suffixes -(i)jo- in the singular, -(t)ero- in the plural; as, **méwiyos**, **menyos**, my, **ṇserós**, our, **téwiyos**, thy, **userós**, your, **séwiyos**.

For such common PIE forms, similar to the genitives of the personal pronouns, cf. Gk. *ēméteros* (<ṇsmé-tero-), *uméteros* (<usmé-tero-), O.Lat. *noster* (<nostero-) uoster (<wos-tero-), Goth. unsara-, (<ṇs-ero-), izwara- (<wesw-ero-?), etc. all used as possessive pronouns; for the singular, cf. Lat. *meus*, O.C.S. *mojĭ*, Goth *meina-*, etc. O.Ind. *madīya-*, *tvadīya*, etc. were formed from the ablatives *mad*, *tvad*, etc., while
possessives *mamaka-*, *asmāka-*, *jusmāka-*, were made from the genitives. See Szemerényi
(1970), Adrados–Bernabé–Mendoza (1995-1998), Meier-Brügger (2003). Possessives are declined like adjectives of the first type, in -os, -ā, -om.
PIE **swos**, **séwiyos**, are only used as reflexives, referring generally to the subject
of the sentence. For a possessive of the third person not referring to the subject, the
genitive of the anaphoric must be used. Thus, **paterṃ séwiyom chenti**, *(s)he/it kills his* [own] father*; but **paterṃ esyo chenti**,* (s)he/it kills his [somebody (m.) else’s] father*.*

## Interrogative and Indefininte pronouns'

There are two forms of the interrogative-indefinite pronoun in Proto-Indo-
European, and each one corresponded to a different class: **qi**- (with ablaut **qei**-) to
the substantive, and **qo**- to the adjective pronouns.

The substantive interrogative pronoun **qis?** who? **qid?** what?, declined like i-:

PIE -**qe**, and, is probably derived from the same root, and was originally a modal
adverb meaning *‘as, like’*; e.g. **patḗr mātērqe**, *father like mother* (Szemerényi 1970).
Similarly, **yo**- is probably behind Hitt. *-ya*.

The adjective interrogative pronoun, **qos?** **qā?** who (of them)?, **qod?** what
kind of? what one?, is declined throughout like the relative:

In the origin, **qi-/qo-** was possibly a noun which meant *‘the unknown’*, and its
interrogative/indefinite sense depended on the individual sentences. Later both became
pronouns with gender, thus functioning as (orthotonic) interrogatives or (enclitic)
indefinites (Szemerényi, 1970). The form **qi-** is probably the original independent form
(compare the degree of specialisation of **qo-**, further extended in IE dialects), for which qocould
have been originally the o-grade form (Beekes 1995, Adrados–Bernabé–Mendoza
1995-1998).

The substantive interrogative pronoun in PIE was **qi-**, whereas **qo-** was used to fill
adjectival functions (Meier-Brügger 2003, Sihler 1995). Some IE dialects have chosen the
o-stem only, as Germanic, while some others have mixed them together in a single
paradigm, as Indo-Iranian, Balto-Slavic or Italic. Cf. Sktr. kaḥ, Av. ko, Gk. tis, Lat. qui,
quae, quod; quis, quid, Osc. pisi, Umb. púí, svepis, O.Pers. čiy, Pers. ki, Phryg. kos, Toch.
kus/kŭse, Arm. ov, inč’, Gmc. \*khwo- (cf. Goth. hwas, O.N. hverr, O.S. hwe, O.E. hwā, Dan.
hvo, O.Fris. hwa, O.H.G. hwër), Lith. kas, Ltv. kas, O.C.S. kuto, Rus. kto, Pol. kto, O.Ir. ce,
cid, Welsh pwy, Alb. kush, Kam. kâča; in Anatolian, compare Hitt. kuiš, Luw. kui-, Lyd. qi-,
Lyc. tike, and Carian kuo.