2. Possessive pronouns

The forms of the genitive case of personal pronouns were used in the function of possessive pronouns, e.g. he hire hand nam ‘he took her hand’; mīn folc ‘my people’; mīne daas ‘my days’. For the 3^rd p. sg. and pl. the pronoun sīn was used, e.g. tō hōfe sīnum ‘to his house’.

Alongside with that the forms of the 3^rd p. personal pronouns, i.e. his, hire, hira were used, which gradually ousted the pronoun sīn.

2. Reflexive pronouns

The reflexive pronoun self was used in combinations with the noun and personal pronoun in OE, e.g. swā-swā hīe cwædon him selfum ‘as they said to themselves’; od self hit eworhte ‘God himself made it’. The pronoun self is declined in accordance with strong declension of adjectives. The function of the reflexive pronoun is also fulfilled by the Dative case of personal pronouns (usually with reflexive verbs), e.g. hē hine restan wolde ‘he wanted to rest’; hē ondrēd him þone mann ‘he was afraid of that man’.

2. Demonstrative pronouns

There were two demonstrative pronouns in OE: se, the prototype of NE that, which distinguished three genders in the sg. and had one form for all the genders in the pl. (see Table 3.8), and þes, the prototype of this with the same subdivisions. They were declined like adjectives according to a five-case system: Nom., Gen., Dat., Acc., and Instr.

Table 3.8

Declension of sē, sēo, þæt

Case	Singular .	Plural
	M N F	All genders
Nom.	sē, se þæt sēo	þā
Gen.	þæs þæs þære	þāra, þæra
Dat.	þæm, þām þæm, þām þære	þām, þæm
Acc.	þone þæt þā	þā
Instr.	þý, þon þý, þon þære	þæm, þām

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. sing and Dat. plural; 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).

In OE demonstrative pronouns were frequently used in the function of the definite article and through agreement with the noun, indicated its number, gender and case.