/This-here/, /these-here/, /that-there/, /those-there/ and /them-there/ are plainly combinations of pronouns and adverbs, and their function is to support the distinction between proximity, as embodied in /this/ and /these/, and remoteness, as embodied in /that/, /those/ and /them/. "/This-here/ coat is mine" simply means "this coat, /here/, or this /present/ coat, is mine." But the adverb promises to coalesce with the pronoun so completely as to obliterate all sense of its distinct existence, even as a false noun or adjective. As commonly pronounced, /this-here/ becomes a single word, somewhat like /thish-yur/, and /these-here/ becomes /these-yur/, and /that-there/ and /them-there/ become /that-ere/ and /them-ere/. /Those-there/, if I observed accurately, is still pronounced more distinctly, but it, too, may succumb to composition in time. The adverb will then sink to the estate of a mere inflectional particle, as /one/ has done in the absolutes of the /thisn/-group. /Them/, as a personal pronoun in the absolute, of course, is commonly pronounced /em/, as in "I seen /em/," and sometimes its vowel is almost lost, but this is also the case in all save the most exact spoken English. Sweet and Lounsbury, following the German grammarians, argue that this /em/ is not really a debased form of /them/, but the offspring of /hem/, which survived as the regular plural of the third person in the objective case down to the beginning of the fifteenth century. But in American /them/ is clearly pronounced as a demonstrative. I have never heard "/em/ men" or "/em/ are the kind I like," but always "/them/ men" and "/them/ are the kind I like." The relative pronouns, so far as I have been able to make out, are declined as follows: /Nominative/ who which what that /Possessive Conjoint/ whose whose /Possessive Absolute/ whosen whosen /Objective/ who which what that [Pg218]