Northern Influences over the Emergence of the Definite Article the: With Special Reference to the Old English Glosses to the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Rushworth Gospels

Northern Influences over the Emergence of the Definite Article the: With Special Reference to the Old English Glosses to the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Rushworth Gospels

The definite article the in English is generally known as a Middle English innovation arising from the Old English demonstrative se for nominative singular masculine. However, textual evidence from the interlinear Old English glosses to the Lindisfarne Gospels and those to the Rushworth Gospels proves that þe (= the) preexisted in Old English. Most of those glosses, which represent the Northern varieties of Old English, indicate that the morphological paradigms of distal demonstratives in those varieties tend to favor the þ-forms rather than the suppletive s-forms. Both glosses furthermore exhibit frequent confusion about grammatical gender and the use of weakened þ-forms. A combination of these morphological properties in Northern dialects could act as a language-internal trigger for the emergence of the indeclinable the as a unified form of a definite article in English.