The Arabic Origins of English Pronouns: A Lexical Root Theory Approach

Abstract

This paper examines the genetic relationship between all personal pronouns, which are part of the core vocabulary of language, in Arabic and English mainly as well as German, French, and Latin secondarily. Converse to traditional views in comparative historical linguistics in which Arabic and English, for example, are classified as members of different language families, it shows how such pronouns are related to and derived from one another, where Arabic may be their end origin. The paper applies the principles and tools of the lexical root theory according to which the pronouns are shown to have the same or similar forms and meanings with slight phonetic, morphological and semantic or lexical changes.