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Concept
He (pronoun)
Summary
In Modern English, he is a singular, masculine, third-person pronoun.
In Standard Modern English, he has four shapes representing five distinct word forms:
he: the nominative (subjective) form
him: the accusative (objective) form (also called the oblique case)
his: the dependent and independent genitive (possessive) forms
himself: the reflexive form
Old English had a single third-person pronoun — from the Proto-Germanic demonstrative base *khi-, from PIE *ko- "this" — which had a plural and three genders in the singular. The modern pronoun it developed out of the neuter singular, starting to appear without the h in the 12th century. Her developed out of the feminine singular dative and genitive forms, while the other feminine forms and the plural were replaced with other words. The older pronoun had the following forms:
In the 12th century, it started to separate and appear without an h. Around the same time, one case was lost, and distinct pronouns started to develop. The -self forms developed in early Middle English, with hine self becoming himself. By the 15th century, the Middle English forms of he had solidified into those we use today.
Gender neutrality in English
He had three genders in Old English, but in Middle English, the neuter and feminine genders split off. Today, he is the only masculine pronoun in English. In the 18th century, it was suggested as a gender-neutral pronoun, and was thereafter often prescribed in manuals of style and school textbooks until around the 1960s. In 2019 the Meriam-Webster dictionary added the singular they after seeing a spike in search interest.
He can appear as a subject, object, determiner or predicative complement. The reflexive form also appears as an adjunct. He occasionally appears as a modifier in a noun phrase.
Subject: He's there; him being there; his being there; he paid for himself to be there.
Object: I saw him; I introduced her to him; He saw himself.
Predicative complement: The only person there was him.
Dependent determiner: I met his friend.
Official source
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