We see that Old English used ordinary personal pronouns for local and non-local binding, and in fact lacked anaphors (expressions which must be locally bound) and pronominals (expressions which must be locally free) in the Binding Theoretic sense. self-forms (himself, herself,...) come into existence c1200 but are mainly used for contrast. The ordinary pronouns remain the primary vehicle of local binding until c1500 when the self-forms assume that role quickly. I provide an explanatory account of these changes in terms of two very general (not language specific) forces of change (Inertia, Decay), two general semantic properties of language (Constituency Interpretation, Antisynonymy) and the start state of the Old English anaphora system (pronouns used for (non-)local binding, extensive use of non-theta object pronouns, establishment of the own construction for possessors). In addition to core Binding Theoretic facts our analysis also accounts for the absence of self-forms in in possessor position (*John lost himself's cat), the presence of self-forms in Inherently Contrastive Expressions (John criticized both himself and the teacher / no one but himself; No one likes to work for anyone smarter than himself), and the presence of subject self-forms (until the early 1700s).

Co-sponsored by the Stanford Linguistics Department Historical Morphosyntax Group.