en:eebo:morphology1 - Příručka ČNK

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====== Lesson 6: Morphology I ======
In Early Modern English, there was a number of morphemes which carried essentially the same meaning. For example, the plural markers < -en> and < -s> were sometimes interchangeable, as in //shoon// or //shoos// (shoes). One such pair of allomorphs are the second person possessive adjectives //thy// and //thine//, which occurred in complementary distribution.

====== Second person possessive adjectives thy and thine ======
Before the regularization resulting in today’s form //your//, Early Modern English had two forms, //thy// and //thine//, both of which functioned as second person possessive adjectives, as in //thy beautiful face// and //thine eyes//.
We might immediately think that the distinction is analogous to present day //my// and //mine//. However, it is not the case. Although in Early Modern English the two pairs of possessives behaved in the same manner, as in //I saw it with mine own eyes//, today the possessive adjective //my// occurs before a noun and has the role of determiner. On the other hand //mine// is a proper possessive pronoun which stands freely in a sentence.

In actual fact, the case appears to be that the case of the //thy/ thine// allomorphs is identical to the //a/ an// distinction, i.e. the difference lies in the pronunciation of the two allomorphs. That is to say that in Early Modern English, the use of the two forms was dependent on the phonetic environment, specifically the following speech sound. Therefore //thy// could be expected to appear before words beginning with a consonant, whereas //thine// occurred before vowels.

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