“ At a later period, however, the nominal and pronominal systems of inflection (q.v.) influenced each other, so that the pronoun shows a number of terminations which properly belong only to the noun, and vice versa. A careful distinction must be observed between pronouns with gender and those without gender. To the former class originally belonged only the pronouns of the first and second persons and the reflexive pronoun of the third person (represented, for instance, by German ich, du, sich) . All other pronouns had gender, which was probably natural, not grammatical in character. ”

“ While the noun is at first concrete, the pronoun is abstract, and thus represents psychologically a much higher concept than the noun. That it is of later development than the noun seems clear from its composite or suppletive inflection, being made up of a number of stems, still seen, for instance, in I, me, we, us. ”