Old English Grammar.

The Nominal System

Outline

Lecture 4. Old English Grammar. The Nominal System.

1. General Survey of the Nominal System. The Noun.
1.1. Gender.
1.2. Number.
1.3. Case.
1.4. Homonymity of forms in Old English.
2. The Pronoun.
2.1. The personl pronoun.
2.2. Other pronouns.
3. The Adjective.
3.1. Declension of adjectives.
3.2. Degrees of comparison.

The Old English language was a synthetic language which means that all the principal grammatical notions were expressed by a change of the form of the
word in the narrow meaning of the term.
The grammatical means that the English language used were primarily: a) suffixation, b) vowel gradation and c) use of suppletive forms.
Old English was a highly inflected language. The abundance of inflections resulted from the fact that the paradigm of declension and the paradigm of
conjugation were formed by many grammatical categories and there was more than one declension in the system of declension and more than one conjugation in the
system of conjugation due to the splitting of the once uniform paradigm in accordance with the original structure of the word.

General survey of the nominal system

There were five declinable parts of speech in Old English: the noun, the pronoun, the adjective, the numeral, the participle. The nominal paradigm in Old
English was characterised by the following grammatical categories (see Table 3.1).
As we can see, the paradigms of different parts of speech had the same number of grammatical categories but these parts of speech were different in the number of
categorial forms composing a given grammatical category. Hence the system of forms of each part of speech requires special consideration.
Note: Among the non-finite forms of the verb the infinitive was also declined.
Table 3.1
Grammatical categories of declinable parts of speech
Categories Gender Number Case
Parts
of speech

Noun + + +
Pronoun + + +
Adjective + + +
Numeral + + +

1. The Noun
The Old English noun paradigm was composed by the following grammatical categories: gender, number, case.
1.1. Gender
The category of gender was formed by the opposition of three gender-forms: masculine, feminine and neuter. All nouns, no matter whether they denoted
living beings, inanimate things or abstract notions belonged to one of the three genders.
The subdivision of Old English nouns in accordance with their grammatical gender is traditional, the correspondence between the meaning of the word and its
grammatical gender being hard to trace.
Some nouns denoting animals were also treated as neuter, such as cicen (chicken), hors (horse), etc.
The grammatical gender did not always coincide with the natural gender of the person and sometimes even contradicted it thus, for instance, the noun wifman (woman)
was declined as masculine).
Compare stвn (stone, masculine), bвn (bone, neuter), cwen (queen, feminine) which belong to different genders but have similar forms.
More examples:
Masculine
Male beings Lifeless things Abstract notions

fǽder (father) hlвf ( bread) stene (stench)

sunu (son) stвn (stone) far (fear)
cyning (king) hrof (roof) nama (name)
dom (doom)

Feminine
Female beings:
modor (mother), dohter (daughter), cwen (queen);

Lifeless things:
tun3e (tongue), meolc (milk);

Abstract notions: trywdu (truth), huntin3 (hunting), lufu (love);

Neuter
Living beings:
cicen (chicken), hors (horse);

Lifeless things:

scip (ship), ea3e (eye);

Abstract notions: mфd (mood), riht (right).

1.2. Number
The grammatical category of number was formed by the opposition of two categorial forms: the singular and the plural.
Nominative Singular Nominative Plural
fisc (fish) fiscas
tфю (tooth) tзю
scip (ship) scipu

1.3. Case
The Old English noun formed its paradigm by the opposition of three genders, two numbers and four cases. Thus, presumably, the noun had twenty-four
word-forms.
On the whole the same could be observed in Common Germanic. In the course of the development of Old English, however, the original paradigm had undergone great
changes due to the fusion of the original stem suffix and the original grammatical ending into one element which from the point of view of Old English is to be
regarded as a grammatical ending. As a result of that fusion nouns that are known to have had different stem-suffixes originally in Old English acquired materially
different endings in the same case, for example:

Nominative plural
a-stem o-stem n-stem
stan -as (stones) car-a (cares) nam-an (names), etc.

The original stem suffixes were formed both by vowels and by consonants. Thus there were two respective principal groups of declensions in Old English:
the vowel declension ("strong" declension) and the consonant declension ("weak" declension).
The vowel (strong) declension comprises four principal paradigms: the a-stem, the o-stem, the u-stem and the i-stem paradigm.
The consonant declension comprises nouns with, the stem originally ending in -n, -r, -s and some other consonants.
In rare cases, however, the new form is constructed by adding the ending directly to the root. It is these words that formed the so-called root-stem declension.

Table 3.2.
Declensions in Old English

Declension
Vowel (strong) stems Consonant (weak) stem Root
Case and
st.
number a o u i n r s

Nom. Sing. stвn caru, sunu, wine nama fǽder lamb fфt

Nom. Plur. stanas cara suna wine naman fжderos lamb fзt

Vowel-Stems. Declension of a-stem nouns

 This type of declension consists of the masculine and the neuter genders of Old English nouns. As a rule those are common everyday words that formed
the very core of the word-stock, such as:
hlвf (bread), hwǽrte (wheat), hors (horse), fisc (fish), scip (ship), etc.
As is seen from Table 3.3 below, the paradigm of the a-stem nouns is characterised by the homonymity of the Nominative and Accusative case-forms. The rest of the
forms retain their endings. The difference between the genders of the nouns is clearly seen from the different endings in the Nominative and the Accusative plural, i.e. -
as for the masculine and -u for the neuter.
Consonant stems. Declension of n-stem nouns
The consonant declensions consisted of nouns with the stem originally ending in -n, -r, -s and other consonants.

Table 3.3.
Declension of a-stem nouns
Gender Masculine Neuter

Case

sg Nominative fisc (fish) scip (ship)

Genitive fisces scipes

Dative fisce scipe

Accusative fisc scip

pl Nominative fiscas scipu

Genitive fisca scipa

Dative fiscum scipum
Accusative fiscas scipu

The n-stem class was formed by nouns of all the three genders, such as nama (name) — masculine, tun3e (tongue) — feminine, ea3e (eye) — neuter.

Table 3.4.
Declension of n-stem nouns
Gender Masculine Feminine Neuter

Case

sg Nominativ. nama tun3e ea3e

Genitive naman tun3an ea3an

Dative naman tun3an ea3an

Accusative naman tun3an ea3e

pl Nominativ. naman tun3an ea3an

Genitive namena tun3ena ea3ena

Dative namum tun3um ea3um

Accusative naman tun3an ea3an

The n-stem was the most important among all the-consonant stem declensions. This class of nouns was composed of common words. The group was very extensive in
Old English and like the a-stem declension it exhibited a tendency to spread its forms over other declensions.
The original stem-suffix -n may be observed in the majority of case forms, but very often the grammatical ending had been dropped in the pre-written period; this
phenomenon gave rise to a well-marked homonymity of the noun forms of the declension. Five case forms of the masculine and the feminine genders — all the
Singular with the exception of the Nominative and the Nominative and the Accusative plural are homonymous, in case of neuter nouns only four forms are
homonymous, as the Accusative case of neuter nouns is homonymous to the Nominative.
Gender oppositions in this declension are also not distinct, the masculine nouns being different from the feminine only in the Nominative Singular and from
the neuter — in the Nominative and the Accusative Singular.

Declension of root-stem nouns

Root-stems require special consideration. This class was not extensive and stood apart among other Old English nouns due to peculiarities of form-building
which was partly retained in Modern English.
 Unlike other classes the root-stem nouns such as man (man, masculine), mыs (mouse, feminine) originally had no stem-suffix and the grammatical ending
was added directly to the root. As a result of that in the Dative Singular and the Nominative and the Accusative Plural the root-vowel had undergone palatal mutation
due to the [i]-sound in the grammatical ending of these forms. Later the ending was dropped and vowel interchange remained the only means of differentiating the
given forms in the paradigm. The endings of the rest of the forms are built up on analogy with those of the a-stems, hence the difference between genders can be
observed only in the Genitive Singular -es for the masculine, -e for the feminine.
Table 3.5.
Declension of root-stem nouns

Gender
Masculine Feminine
Case

man mus (mouse)

Nominative Genitive
sg mannes muse
Dative Accusative
man mys
man mus

pl Nominative men mys

Genitive manna musa

Dative mannum musum
Accusative men mys

1.4. Homonymity of forms in Old English and its influence on the further development of noun forms
In the prehistoric period of the development of the English language each case had an ending typical of its uninflected form. In the course of the
development of the English language, however, due to various semantic and phonetic changes different cases began to develop similar endings within one and the same
paradigm; this phenomenon gave rise to the well-marked homonymity of case-forms in English. The reference table given below show the principal noun suffixes in
Old English. The table serves to prove that the twenty-four word-forms which built up the noun paradigm had but nine materially different endings. The most distinct
among them are:
-es - genitive singular, masculine and neuter
-a/ena — genitive plural, all genders
-um - dative plural, all genders
-as - nominative and accusative plural, masculine.
As for the rest of the forms their mutual homonymity is considerable. For example, nouns with the stem originally ending in -a show gender differences only in the
plural, all the forms in the singular but the nominative being homonymous, irrespective of gender and case differences.

2. The Pronoun
The following classes of pronouns were to be observed in Old English: personal, possessive, demonstrative, interrogative, relative and indefinite pronouns.
The system of declension of the pronoun was not the same for all the classes. It has at least two subsystems that should be singled out: the declension of personal
pronouns on the one hand and the declension of other pronouns. Although the grammatical categories of each subsystem were the same, i. e. gender, number, case, the
number of the categorial forms composing those categories was different.
2.1. The personal pronoun
The Old English personal pronoun similar to the Old English noun had the grammatical categories of gender, number and case.
Gender
Three genders could be distinguished in the pronominal paradigm: masculine, feminine and neuter, but different forms for different genders were found only in the
third person singular, the rest of the forms being indifferent to gender.

Masculine Feminine Neuter

Nom. Singular hз(he) hзo (she) hоt (it)

Nom. Plural hо (they)
Number
The category of number differs from that of the noun as in the first and second person we find three categorial forms: singular, dual and plural, for instance:
Singular
Ic (I)
Dual
wit (two of us)
Plural
wз (we)

Case
The category of case is built up by the opposition of four categorial forms, similar to those of the noun: Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative.
The table below may serve as an example of the declension of personal pronouns.
Unlike the Old English noun, the paradigm of which was composed of forms that mainly differed in the ending, the paradigm of the Old English personal pronouns is
built up by suppletive forms and the homonymity of pronominal forms is not great. We find it only in the Dative and the Accusative cases.

Table 3.6.
Declension of the personal pronoun Ic
Number
Singular Dual Plural
Case

Nominative ic wit wз

Genitive mоn uncer user, ure

Dative mз unc ыs
Accusative mec, mз unc usic, ыs

3.2. Other pronouns

All Old English pronouns with the exception of personal pronouns were declined almost alike. They expressed the grammatical categories of gender (three forms:
masculine, feminine and neuter), number (two forms: singular and plural) and case, which was built up by five categorial forms: the Nominative, the Accusative, the
Dative, the Genitive and the Instrumental, different from the Dative only in the Singular.
Table 3.7.
Declension of the demonstrative pronoun sз, singular
Gender Number Masculine Feminine Neuter
Singular Singular Singular
Case that that that

Nominative se seo þǽt

Genitive þǽs þǽre þǽs

Dative þǽm þǽre þǽm
Accusative þone þa þǽt

Instrumental þy, þon

Table 3.8.
Declension of the demonstrative pronoun sз, plural

Case

Nominative þa (those)

Genitive þara
Dative þǽm
Accusative þa

Instrumental þy

2. The Adjective
3.1. Declension of Adjectives
The paradigm of the adjectives is similar to that of the noun and the pronoun, i.e. it comprises Gender, Number, Case (the Nominative, the Accusative, the
Dative, the Genitive and the Instrumental).
There were two ways of declining Adjectives – the Definite and Indefinite declension. The adjective followed the Definite declension mainly if the noun modified
had another attribute – a demonstrative pronoun, and they were declined as Indefinite otherwise.
The grammatical suffixes – forms of cases mainly coincided with those of nouns with the stem originally ending in a vowel or –n.
 Table 3.9.
Declension of adjectives
Declension Indefinite (Strong) Definite
(Weak)
Case good good

Nominative 3od 3oda

Genitive 3odes
Dative 3odum
Accusative 3odne 3odan

Instrumental 3ode

3.2. Degrees of comparison

The forms of the adjective in Old English could express degrees of comparison (positive, comparative and superlative). The degrees of comparison were
expressed synthetically:
a) by means of suffixation: heard – heardra – heardost (hard);
b) by means of vowel gradation plus suffixation: eald – ieldra – ieldest (old);
c) by means of suppletive forms: 3od – bettra – betst (good).

I. Questions:
1. Analyse the differentiating features among Old English vowels (in quality and quantity).
2. Old English diphthongs: comment on their phonological status.
3. Explain the origin of Old English short diphthongs.
4. What are the phonetic conditions of palatal mutation?
5. What are the phonetic conditions of breaking?

II. Decline the following OE nouns:

wine (i-stem, m), hnutu (root-stem, f), lamb (s-stem, m), fisc (a-stem, m).

III. Explain phonetic peculiarities within the following pairs of words:

Gth. sandjan – OE sendan, Gth. domjan – deman, Gth. satjan – settan.

IV. Decline the following OE nouns:

stan (a-stem, m), scip (a-stem, m), fisc (a-stem, m).

V. Explain phonetic changes within the following OE words:

OE hira – hiora, OE hefun – heofon.