ETYMOLOGY OF PERSONAL PRONOUNS

Abstract

The article provides an etymological interpretation of personal pronouns in
languages of different systems and reconstructs their original proto-forms. Pronouns preserve traces of the most archaic vocabulary of every language. Therefore, the study of the morphophonological development of pronoun roots is of great importance for the investigation of ancient vocabulary. The evidence that pronounsbelong to the most ancient group of words is precisely the analogy of pronoun roots across different languages, since common root morphemes in both related and unrelated languages constitute the oldest lexical layer of the proto-language. The interference, transformation, and semantic changes of pronoun roots are the result of the historical evolution and differentiation of the world’s languages. The emergence of phonological and semantic differences in homogeneous pronoun roots observed in languages of different systems is connected with the individual development of world languages. Personal pronouns are among the most ancient types of pronouns.