Table 6

 

As seen from the table, the paradigm of the demonstrative pronoun sē contained many homonymous forms. Some case endings resembled those of personal pronouns, e.g. -m – Dat. Masc. and Neut. sg and Dat. pl; the element -r- in the Dat. and Gen. sg Fem. and in the Gen. pl. These case endings, which do not occur in the noun paradigms, are often referred to as "pronominal" endings (-m, -r-, -t).

Demonstrative pronouns are of special importance for a student of OE for they were frequently used as noun determiners and through agreement with the noun, indicated its number, gender and case. The forms of the pronouns may help to define the forms of the nouns in ambiguous instances, e. g. in the phrases on p em lande, to p ere heorde ‘on that land, to that herd’ the forms of the pronouns help to differenti­ate gender: p em is Neut. or Masc., p ere is Fem.; both nouns are in the Dat. sg and happen to have identical endings: -e. In the following sentences the forms p et and pa help to distinguish between numbers: