LECTURE 5

OLD ENGLISH GRAMMAR.

THE NOMINAL SYSTEM.
 Plan
1. General Characteristics of OE Grammar.
2. The Noun. Its Grammatical Categories.
3. Noun Declensions.
4. The Adjective. Morphological categories of
the Adjective.
5. Strong and Weak Declensions of Adjectives.
Degrees of Comparison.
6. The Pronoun. Classes of Pronouns.
 Literature
 Расторгуева Т.А. История английского языка.
– М.: Астрель, 2005. – С. 92-108.
 Ильиш Б.А. История английского языка. – Л.:
Просвещение, 1972. – С. 63-86.
 Иванова И.П., Чахоян Л.П. История
английского языка. – М.: Высшая школа,
1976. – С. 98-135.
 Студенець Г.І. Історія англійської мови в
таблицях. - К.: КHЛУ, 1998. – Tables 40-46.
 Spas’ka L.A. A History of the English language,
Sumy. – 2008.
 OE was a synthetic language, though
the synthetic grammatical forms
(built with the help of suffixes, prefixes,
sound alternation and on the basis of
suppletive formations) were less
numerous than in PIE.
 The analytical grammatical forms
(built with the help of auxiliary verbs,
auxiliary words, changes of stress and
on the basis of the word-order) were
practically absent.
There were 5 declinable parts of speech in
OE: the Noun, the Adjective, the Pronoun,
the Numeral and the Participle.
The nominal paradigm in OE was characterized
by the following grammatical categories:

Gender Number Case

Noun + + +
Pronoun + + +
Adjective + + +
Numeral + + +
 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.
Gender Number Case
Noun 3 2 4
Pronoun 3 3/2 4/5
(personal /demonstrative)

Adjective 3 2 5
Numeral 3 2 4
 The Noun in OE. The OE noun had
grammatical categories of Gender,
Number and Case.
 The category of gender was based
on the opposition of three genders –
masculine, feminine and neuter.
 Gender was not a purely grammatical category.
It was a lexico-grammatical category, because
gender was expressed not so much by the
inflections but by the forms of agreement of
adjectives, numerals and pronouns which modify
the noun.
 Thus every noun with all its forms belonged
to one of the genders. The
grammatical gender didn’t always coincide
with the natural gender of the person
and sometimes even contradicted it (e.g.
the noun wifman (woman) was declined as
masculine)
 The grammatical category of Gender in OE
is already in the process of decay: some
nouns could be declined in accordance with
different genders usually in different texts:
e. g. ærist (resurrection) – m, f and n.
 The OE Noun had two numbers:
singular and plural.
 The category of case was represented by
four opposite members:
N (the Nominative case);
G (the Genitive case);
D (the Dative case);
Acc. (the Accusative case).
The once existing instrumental case was no
longer existing in OE. Its functions were
taken by the Dative case.
 It is necessary to mark that
the morphological classification of OE
nouns is based on the most ancient (PIE)
grouping of nouns according to the stem-
suffixes. The existence of stem-building
suffixes is found in other IE languages.
They were mostly -a, -ō, -u, -i.

 But in Germanic languages stem-building

suffixes practically are not observed, they have
already merged with either the ending or the
root. The loss was reinforced by the heavy
Germanic stress on the root.
 On the basis of former stem-building suffixes most scholars
distinguish strong and weak declensions of OE nouns.
 the strong declension includes nouns with stems
(-a, -ō, -i, -u) which are often called vocalic;
 the weak declension comprises nouns with the stem
originally ending in n-stem only. There are some minor
declensions (r-stems, s-stem,nd- stems) (consonantal
( ).
 There is also the root-stem declension in which the ending
is added not to the suffix but to the root immediately.

Vowel (strong) stems Consonant Root

stem
stems
a ō u i n

Nominative stān caru sunu wine nama fōt

Singular (stone) (care) (son) (wine) (name) (foot)
 Itis necessary to speak about
peculiar features of some
declensions which have the
so-called remnants in PDE.
 The OE vowel a-stem

declension is the most widely

spread and proved to be the
most stable in the history.
 The NE possessive OE fisc, m., -a
infleсtion -‘s goes (fish)
back to the -es
Sing. N. fisc
ending of the Gen.
case Sg. of masculine G. fisces
and neuter nouns D. fisce
of a-stem declension.
Acc. fisc
The plural -(e)s is the
present-day survival Plur. N. fiscas
fisc
of the OE Nom. Pl. G. fisca
-as of m. and n. D. fiscum
nouns of a-stem
declension. Acc. fiscas
 Another ModE survival of
a-stem is the zero OE scēap, n., -a
ending of plurals of such (sheep)
nouns as scēap, swīn etc.
Sing. N. scēap
Neuter nouns with a long
root-vowel had in the G. scēapes
plural the zero ending D. scēape
(N. and Acc. Sg.:
scēap; N. and Acc Pl.: Acc. scēap
scēap). The forms were Plur. N. scēap
of high frequency, and
therefore the zero G. scēapa
ending in both singular D. scēapum
and plural have been
preserved up to Acc. scēap
nowadays.
 A-stem nouns (1/3 of all OE nouns) may be
either of masculine (m.) or neuter (n.) gender.
The difference in 2 genders is only seen in the Nom., Acc. Pl.
The m. nouns had -as, in the n. nouns the ending depends
on the quantity of the root syllable: the short-vowel n. nouns
had in plural the ending -u (N., Acc. Sg. scip; N., Acc. Pl.
scipu); the long-vowel n. nouns – zero ending.
N. stān (m.) (stone) Scip (n.) (ship) bān (n.) (bone)

G. stānes scipes bānes

D. stāne scipe bāne

Acc. stān scip bān

N. stānas
stān scipu bān

G. stāna scipa bāna

D. stānum scipum bānum

Acc. stānas
stān scipu
scip bān
 The
a-stem declension has
its variants: ja-stems and
wa-stems.

here (m./-ja) – bearu (m./-wa) –

army wood
Nom. here bearu
Gen. heriʒes bearwes
Dat. heriʒe bearwe
Acc. here bearu
 There are also PDE remnants of the -n- (weak)
stem. The nouns of this declension had the
ending -an in five of eight possible forms
(hence the name of the declension - weak).
Nom. nama (m.) - name cwene (f.) - woman
Gen. naman
nam cwenan
cwen
Dat. naman
nam cwenan
cwen
Acc. naman
nam cwenan
cwen
Nom. naman
nam cwenan
cwen
Gen. namena cwenena
cwen
Dat. namum cwenum
cwen
Acc. naman
nam cwenan
cwen
 The element -n- was a direct
descendant of old stem-suffix.
In ME -an reduced to -en and
was preserved for a period of time
in such nouns as oxen, cowen,
herten, eyen, eren, shoen etc.
Nowadays it is preserved in oxen.
In children it began to be used
later by analogy.
 The root stem declension stands
apart from the rest: the inflections
were joined not to the suffix but to
the root.
 The characteristic feature of this type

of nouns was the original existence

of the i-element in the forms
of the D. Sg. (e.g. manni and also
in the N. and Acc. Pl. manniz).
 It is not visible in OE because the endings were lost
earlier. Due to /-i/ the root vowel underwent i-Umlaut
and these forms became men. Other nouns of this class
are: tōð (tooth), fōt (foot), bōc (book), āc (oak) etc.

Nom. mann (m.) - man fōt (m.) - foot

Gen. mannes fōtes
Dat. menn fēt
Acc. mann fōt
Nom. menn fēt
Gen. manna fōta
Dat. mannum fōtum
Acc. menn fēt
 This group was not numerous, but the
words belonging to it were characterized
by high frequency of use: they were
often used in everyday speech, therefore
less subjected to changes.
 This specific feature explains the vowel
interchange within the roots of such nouns
as foot, goose, tooth, mouse etc.
in the Plural form. In NE they
constitute the group of exceptions as
regards the formation of plural.
 The Adjective in OE. The OE adjective was a
fully declinable part of speech. It had the same
categories as nouns (number, gender and case):
2 numbers, 3 genders and 5 cases.
 The categories of adjectives differ from
the same categories of nouns: the categories of
nouns are independent while the categories
of adjectives are dependable upon the
nouns. OE adjectives usually agree with the
nouns they refer to in gender, number and case:
this feature characterizes PIE and Modern
Slavonic languages.
 The Adjective had two types of declensions:
strong and weak. Strong adjectives had
more endings opposed to each other,
so these adjectives had a stronger distinctive power.
Weak declension of adjectives was
characterized by the ending -an, which was
used in most of the forms, so a lot of weak forms
were homonymous and had a weak distinctive power.
Nominative ʒōd (m.) – good Str. ʒōda (m.) W.
Genitive ʒōdes ʒōdan
ōd
Dative ʒōdum ʒōdan
ōd
Accusative ʒōdne ʒōdan
ōd
Instrumental ʒōde ʒōdan
ōd
 The difference between the strong and the weak
declension of adjectives wasn’t only formal but
also semantic (strong declension was used to add
the meaning of indefiniteness).
 Most adjectives could be declined according to
both declensions. The choice of declension was
determined by a number of factors: the
syntactical function of the adjective and the
presence of determiners.
 If there was a demonstrative or a possessive
pronoun referring to the noun, these pronouns
determined the meaning of the phrase and the
adjective was weak, if there was no pronoun,
the adjective was used in the strong form:
 e.g.: se
micla here (this big army) but
micel here (a big army).
 Some adjectives also changed their forms in
accordance with the category of Degrees of
comparison.
 The regular suffix of the comparative degree
was -ra, the superlative degree had mostly
suffix -ost: earm – earmra – earmost.
 Some adjectives had changes affected by
i-Umlaut in the comparative and superlative
degrees: eald – ieldra- ieldest; heah –
hierra – hiehst.
 There was a group of adjectives which had
suppletive forms of the degrees of
comparison: ʒod – betera – betst
 The Pronoun in OE. In OE there existed several groups of
pronouns: Personal, Demonstrative, Definite,
Indefinite, Negative and Relative. It can be easily seen
that there was no separate group of Possessive
pronouns in OE. They will be separated from the group of
personal pronouns only in ME.
 Personal pronouns can replace nouns; therefore they are
called noun-pronouns. The paradigm of personal pronouns is
extremely suppletive: it consists of many individual forms.

1 person Singular Dual Plural

Nominative ic wit wē
Genitive mīn uncer ūre, user
Dative mē unc ūs
Accusative mec, mē unc ūsic, ūs
 Personal pronouns had the following
grammatical categories: the category of
Person (three persons: the first, the
second and the third); the category of
Number (three numbers: singular, dual
and plural); the category of Case (four
cases: Nominative, Genitive, Dative,
Accusative). The third person singular had the
category of gender with masculine, feminine,
neuter forms. In plural there was no gender
differences: one form could be referred to
different genders.
 Demonstrative pronouns.
If personal pronouns are often called noun-
pronouns the demonstrative pronouns are called
adjective-pronouns because they fulfill identical
with adjectives functions and their grammatical
categories are very much alike. Practically
speaking there existed two demonstrative
pronouns – sē (that) and ðes (this). These
pronouns had many paradigmatic forms
reflecting grammatical categories of gender,
case, number and also the deictic (near-far)
category. That is why these pronouns make up
two groups based on the deictic opposition.
 They had the category of Gender (3 genders),
2 numbers, 5 cases and agreed with the nouns in
number, gender and case. Demonstrative pronouns had
one more grammatical category: Far-Near, pointing to
objects which are near as opposed to those which are
far.
 Demonstrative pronouns played an important functional
role in the grammatical system of OE, helping to
differentiate homonymous forms of nouns.

m. n. f.
Nominative se þæt seo
Genitive þæs þæs þære
Dative þæm, þam þæm, þam þære
Accusative þone þæt þa
Instrumental Þy, þon þy, þon þære
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