THE ORIGIN OF PERSONAL PRONOUNS

Abstract

The research topic of the article is the origin of personal pronouns which is one of the most obscure mysteries of comparative-historical linguistics. As a base for the investigation is taken the fact that in most languages of the world pronouns originate from nouns. In some languages pronouns have preserved their original meaning, in some cases, the noun is used as a pronoun as well. The material for the research has been taken from different language families, especially from Indo-European and Fenno-Ugric languages. It is supposed that personal pronouns of the types man and ego in the Indo-European languages come from nouns with the original meanings man and soul. Later the semantic field was enlarged, and the same root obtained some other meanings, i.e. male, warrior, knight, lord, body, person, husband, king, commander, hero, creature, army, crowd, spirit, ghost, wind, shadow, vapour, air, etc.