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Concept
I (pronoun)
Summary
In Modern English, I is the singular, first-person pronoun.
Morphology (linguistics) and Objective case#English
In Standard Modern English, I has five distinct word forms:
I: the nominative (subjective) form
I is the only pronoun form that is always capitalized in English. This practice became established in the late 15th century, though lowercase i was sometimes found as late as the 17th century.
me: the accusative (objective) forms (the accusative case is also called the 'oblique'.)
my: the dependent genitive (possessive) form
mine: the independent genitive
myself: the reflexive form
Old English had a first-person pronoun that inflected for four cases and three numbers. I originates from Old English (OE) ic, which had in turn originated from the continuation of Proto-Germanic *ik, and ek; The asterisk denotes an unattested form, but ek was attested in the Elder Futhark inscriptions (in some cases notably showing the variant eka; see also ek erilaz). Linguists assume ik to have developed from the unstressed variant of ek. Variants of ic were used in various English dialects up until the 1600s. The Proto-Germanic root came, in turn, from the Proto Indo-European language (PIE) *eg-.
Early OE circa 700 CE, late, and ME
Old English me and mec are from Proto-Germanic *meke (accusative) and *mes (dative). Mine is from Proto-Germanic *minaz, and my is a reduced form of mine. All of these are from PIE root *me-.
I can appear as a subject, object, determiner, or predicative complement. The reflexive form also appears as an adjunct. Me occasionally appears as a modifier in a noun phrase.
Subject: I'm here; me being here; my being there; I paid for myself to be here.
Object: She saw me; She introduced him to me; I saw myself.
Predicative complement: The only person there was me / I.
Dependent determiner: I met my friend.
Independent determiner: This is mine.
Adjunct: I did it myself.
Modifier: the me generation
Between you and I
The above applies when the pronoun stands alone as the subject or object.
Official source
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