The reflective pronoun often becomes reciprocal.
[§ 395]. These statements are made for the sake of illustrating, not of exhausting, the subject. It follows, however, as an inference from them, that the classification of pronouns is complicated. Even if we knew the original power and derivation of every form of every pronoun in a language, it would be far from an easy matter to determine therefrom the paradigm that they should take in grammar. To place a word according to its power in a late stage of language might confuse the study of an early stage. To say that because a word was once in a given class, it should always be so, would be to deny that in the present English they, these, and she are personal pronouns at all.
The two tests, then, of the grammatical place of a pronoun, its present power and its original power, are often conflicting.
[§ 396]. In the English language the point of most importance in this department of grammar is the place of forms like mine and thine; in other words, of the forms in -n.
Now, if we take up the common grammars of the English language as it is, we find, that, whilst my and thy are dealt with as genitive cases, mine and thine are considered adjectives. In the Anglo-Saxon grammars, however, min and þin, the older forms of mine and thine, are treated as genitives or possessives.
[§ 397]. This gives us two views of the words my and thy.
a. They may be genitives or possessives, which were originally datives or accusatives; in which case they are deduced from the Anglo-Saxon mec and þec.
b. They may be the Anglo-Saxon min and þin, minus the final -n.