278 HEWETT — PRONOUNS IN- ENGLISH LITERATURE. [April 9, 



THE HISTORICAL USE OF THE RELATIVE PRONOUNS 

 IN ENGLISH LITERATURE. 



BY PROFESSOR WATERMAN T. HEWETT, PH.D. 

 {Read April 9, 1904.) 



In examining the manuscript of a new volume submitted for pub- 

 lication, I was struck with the fact that the relative pronoun w/iic/i 

 was not used by the author. The question arose, whether there 

 was a portion of our country in which, through historical or 

 possibly educational influence, the use oHhat prevailed in place of 

 which. In my subsequent reading, I marked the use of these pro- 

 nouns in order to determine their literary use. Many of the 

 characteristics of literary form depend upon the choice of the pro- 

 noun adopted. The use of one or the other pronoun is a character- 

 istic of the style of representative English writers and lends a 

 special quality to their form and expression. 



The Germanic languages did not possess a distinctive relative 

 pronoun. The place of such pronoun in Old English was supplied 

 by se, seo and paet, also by the indeclinable demonstrative form 

 pe (the), which was frequently added to the article, and, though 

 less frequently, by the interrogatives which and who. IVhai (Jiwaet) 

 as a relative occurs first at the beginning of the thirteenth century. 

 Following the Conquest, the use of pe (the) as a relative declined, 

 due, possibly, to the increasing tendency to use this particle in 

 place of all the forms of the definite article. About 1200, the 

 neuter /^^/ was, in general, used as a relative in both numbers and 

 in all persons and genders in the nominative and accusative cases. 

 This use may have been promoted by the influence of the French 

 conjunction que. 



The interrogatives who and which were used, but only in isolated 

 cases, as relatives, who referring mainly to persons and which 

 to things. By the time of the translation of the King James 

 version of the Bible, in 161 1, the development in the use of the 

 relative pronouns had attained certain distinct features. The 

 most striking difl'erentiation in use consisted in the fact that that 

 was made to refer to pronouns and ivhich to nouns. The use 

 of which had constantly increased and had gradually displaced 

 thaty and who and what had gained in frequency of use. The 



