Excerpt from A Historical French Grammar But' this increase in use led to a weakening of their emphasis, and pronouns which were originally accented gradually became atonic. In the 12th century we see nominatives of personal pronouns for the first time used in this new way. It required four centuries for this use to become finally established in the language. At the end of the 16th century the revolution was complete: the three persons were then definitively marked in' the verb by the use of atonic nominative personal pronouns; and it was this new grammatical formation which prevented the loss of these nominatives. If the distinction of the verbal forms by means of ia flexion had subsisted down to the end of the 14th century, the nominative cases of pronouns would have shared the fate of the nominative cases of nouns, and disappeared. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.