January 27, 2012

AND SO A GOES TO HEAVEN.

A post at bradshaw of the future investigates the Gloucestershire epicene pronoun ou, which "derives from Middle English a, which in turn derives from Old English he 'he' and heo 'she'":

So was Middle English a really an epicene pronoun? Well, we have examples of it from Trevisa standing for both "he" and "she", as in these cites from the OED [...] It's in Shakespeare too. Here Hamlet is talking about Polonius.
1604 Shakespeare Hamlet iii. iii. 73 Now might I doe it, but now a is a praying, And now Ile doo't, and so a goes to heauen.
Modern versions have
Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;
And now I'll do't. And so he goes to heaven;
But there seems to be a difference between a and singular they. In the examples above, the antecedents have known genders. Singular they is usually not used when the gender of the antecedent is known. What I'd like to know is: can Middle English a (or Gloucester ou) be used when the gender of the antecedent is unknown or irrelevant?
I hadn't been aware of this early pronoun; it's no longer usable, alas, having been worn down to a mere schwa (which would probably be interpreted as "I" if heard in a stream of discourse), but it's certainly an interesting phenomenon.

Posted by languagehat at January 27, 2012 08:22 PM
Comments

Singular they is about indefiniteness, not gender ambiguity. See this Language Log post for a fine example.

Posted by: John Cowan at January 27, 2012 09:56 PM

Another Shakespearean instance was concealed behind an apparent indefinite pronoun for over a century, until poor Pope-ridden Lewis Theobald brilliantly emended the nonsensical line 'And a table of green fields', in Falstaff's off-stage death scene, to 'And a babbled of green fields'.

Posted by: Tom Recht at January 27, 2012 11:29 PM

Uh, make that indefinite article, of course. There's actually a good excuse for that silly slip (for once), but never mind.

Posted by: Tom Recht at January 27, 2012 11:47 PM

Serendipitous. I recently read Hamlet in my "Complete Pelican Shakespeare" and found all these as that I didn't remember from the editions we read in high school.

Posted by: marc at January 28, 2012 12:46 AM

A schoolfriend of mine had a "universal Shakespearian quotation", usable for essays on Hamlet or (he claimed) any other play where the examiner would probably take it on trust.

"Lights, lights!"

Posted by: dearieme at January 28, 2012 06:49 AM

these a-s, don't they look suspiciously like the 'a' in awaiting or in 'baby, baby, bunting, daddy's gone a-hunting' or in the similar 'speech-marker' usage among 'Gyptians' in Pullman's trilogy?

Posted by: Sashura at January 28, 2012 02:53 PM

No, that a- is of a different origin.

Posted by: languagehat at January 28, 2012 04:21 PM

This pronoun was surprisingly productive in some regional English dialects until quite recently. I'm not sure where my copy is, so I can't check right now, but I believe that the hedgehog character "Tiggy" uses it in T.H. White's charming "The Book of Merlin". I think his speech was meant to be representative of a West country accent.

Posted by: koj at January 28, 2012 09:12 PM