Nouns in OE had the categories of number, gender and case. Gender is actually not a gram. Category in a strict sense of the word, for every noun with all its forms belongs to only one gender; but case and number had a set of endings. Nouns used to denote males are normally masculine Рmann, ľder (man, father). Naturally, those denoting females should be all feminine, - modor, sweostor (mother, sister).

There are two numbers – sing. and pl., and 4 cases – nominative, genitive, dative, accusative. The number proved to be a stable category, relevant for rendering the meanings and expressing the true state of things in reality. Case is supplanted by other means to express the relations between words in an utterance, whereas gender disappeared altogether.

All the nouns can be classified according to the different principles. In traditional historical studies the nouns are divided into classes according to the former stem-forming suffixes. These stem-forming suffixes determined what inflections were taken by the nouns.

The nouns in OE are commonly classified as belonging to strong and weak declension, within each of these groups there are several subgroups.

This class of nouns consists of a rather numerous group of nouns originally having – n-stems; the suffix is well-preserved in declension of nouns in OE, but disappeared in the nom. Case n-stem nouns may be of all three genders. But actually no difference in declension of nouns of different genders can be found.

e.g.: masculine: wita (wise man), steorra (star),

neuter: cofa (chamber)

feminine: heorte (heart), sunne (sun).

Root stems. This group comprises the nouns that never had a stem suffix.

e.g.: wimman (woman), tōð (tooth), mūs (mouse).

The nouns belonging to r-stems were of masculine and feminine gender, the group is a closed system. It included only the terms of kinship. The endings here are scarce, a distinctive feature is that the dative case sing. had a mutated vowel.

e.g.: dohtor (daughter), sweostor (sister).

Less numerous and less significant for the development of the present-day nominal system are the nouns that had other consonants as a stem-forming suffix. S-stems had this suffix in older times, they changed it into occasional appearance of r-sound in indirect cases. They are all neuter.

e.g. lamb (lamb), cealf (calf), cild (child).

-nd-stems are all masculine and their declension combines the peculiarities of the declension of a-stems and, to some extent, r-stems as they all denote persons.

e.g. frēond (friend), fēond (accuser).

The strong declension includes nouns that had had a vocalic stem-forming suffix.

a-stems may be either masculine (earm – arm, biscop – bishop, hām - home) or neuter (dōr – door, bearn – child, hūs - house).

There are some peculiarities of declension of the nouns that had originally –j- or –w- in the stem (they are called –ja- and –wa- stems);they may preserve this sound in declension; but otherwise the differences are minor. Also, some nouns might have become still clumsier when an inflection was added. So we may see the omission of such sound (the second root vowel in such words as heafod – heafdes (head)).

e.g. of –ja-stems are: fiscere (fisherman), net (net),

-wa-stems: trēo (tree), cnēo (knee).

Nouns belonging to ō-stems are all feminine. In the form of the nom. case monosyllabic nouns with a short root vowel of this class have ending –u; if there are two and more syllables or the root vowel is long, there is no ending at all.

e.g. caru (care), scamu (shame), lufu (love).

In this group of nouns the suffix –ō- may also be accompanied by additional i and w, that is –jō- and –wō-stems will give variants of declension: hild (battle), sceadu (shade).

The nouns formerly having –i-suffix, now called –i-stems might belong to all the three genders, and the case endings are different for different genders – masculine and neuter have the same endings as masc. and neuter nouns of the a-stems, and feminine noun endings repeated the endings of the o-endings.

e.g. masc.: mere (sea), mete (food)

neuter: sife (sieve), mynster (monastery)

feminine: wiht (thing), hyde (hide).

Nouns belonging to u-stems may be of masculine (wudu – wood, medu - honey) or feminine gender (nosu – nose, flōr - floor).

33.The OE NOUN The OE noun had two grammatical or morphological categories :number and case. In addition, nouns distinguished three genders, but this distinction was not a grammatical category.The category of number consisted of two members, singular and plural.The noun had four cases: Nominative, Genitive, Dative and Accusative. The ,most remarkable feature of OE nouns was their elaborate system of declensions, which was a sort of morphological classification. The total number of declensions, including both the major and minor types, exceeded twenty-five. The OE system of declensions was based on a number of distinctions: the stem-suffix, the gender of nouns, the phonetic structure of the word, phonetic changes in the final syllables.

The morphological classification of OE nouns rested upon the most ancient (IE) grouping of nouns according to the stem-suffixes.

The morphological classification OE nouns rested upon the most ancient grouping of nouns according to the stem-suffixes. Some groups jf nouns had no stem-forming suffix or had a “zero-suffix”; they are usually termed “root-stems” and are grouped together with consonantal stems, as their roots ended in consonants, e.g. OE man, boc (NE man, book).These substantives seem to represent the oldest type, stemmingfrom the period when there were no stem-forming suffixes and the root was used as a stem without addition of any special stem-forming element.

This type of stem is represented in various Indo-European lan​guages. Thus in Latin we find substantives of the 3rd declension rex 'king', gen. sing, reg-is, etc. In Gothic we find a clear example of a root stem in the substantive baurgs 'borough', whose declension is only complicated by the adoption of the -im ending in the dative plural on the analogy of i-stems (baurgim).

In OE there are a number of substantives of all three genders which wholly or partly belong to the root-stem declension.

The fact that the case endings were joined on immediately to the root in words of this type led to a change in the root vowel. Consequences of this change make themselves felt in several English substantives down to the present time.

The masculine substantives hselep 'hero' (cp. German Held) and monap 'month' are close to this type in so far as they often have in the nominative and accusative plural forms without endings: haslep, tnonap.

Feminine root stems with a short syllable in the nominative sin​gular has the ending -u; those with a long root syllable have no end​ing at all in this case.

The substantive wifman, wimman 'woman' is declined in the same way as mann. Other examples of root stems are: feminine ac 'oak', sat 'goat'.

The OE root stems correspond to Latin 3rd declension substan​tives, as pes, pedis 'foot'; pax, pads 'peace'.

 

The noun

 

The Old English noun paradigm was composed by the following grammatical categories: gender, number, case.

 

2.1. Gender

 

The category of gender was formed by the opposition of three gender-forms: masculine, feminine and neuter. All nouns, no matter whether they denote 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 stān (stone, masculine), bān (bone, neuter), cwen (queen, feminine) which belong to different genders but have similar forms.

More examples:

 

 

 

 

Masculine

 

male beings lifeless things abstract notions

fæder (father) hlāf (bread) stenc (stench)

sunu (son) stān (stone) fǽr (fear)

cyning (king) hrōf (roof) nama (name)

dōm (doom)

 

 

Feminine

 

female beings lifeless things abstract notions

Mōðor (mother) tunge (tongue) trywðu (truth)

Dohter (daughter) meolc (milk) huntinз (hunting)

Cwēn (queen) lufu (love)

Зōs (goose)

 

 

Neuter

 

living being lifeless things abstract notions

cicen (chicken) ēaзe (eye) mōd (mood)

hors (horse) scip (ship) riht (right)

mæзden (maiden)

 

 

2.2. Number

 

The grammatical category of number was formed by the opposition of two categorical forms: the singular and the plural.

 

Nominative Singular Nominative Plural

Fisc (fish) fiscas

Ēaзe (eye) ēaзan

Tōð (tooth) tēð

Scip(ship) scipu

 

 

 

 

 

2.3. 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 phenomenon 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 ō-stem n-stem

stān-as (stones) car-a (care) 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 ō-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.

 

Declensions in Old English

Declension   Case and number	Vowel (strong) stem	Consonant (weak) stem	Root stem
Nom. Sing.   Nom. Plur.	a ō u i	N r s
	stān caru sunu wine (stone) (care) (son)(wine) Stanas cara suna wine (Stones)(cares)(sons)(wine)	nama fæder lamb (name) (father) (lamb) Naman fæderos lamb	fōt (foot) fēt (feet)

 

 

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:

 

hlāf (bread), hwǽrte (wheat), hors (horse), fisc (fish), scip (ship), etc.

 

As seen from the table, the paradigm of the a-stem nouns is characterized 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. Nouns which had a long stem syllable had the zero ending in the Nominative and the Accusative Plural (such as scēap (sheep), land (land), etc.).

 

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. Declensions of the stems other than –n are not analyzed here as nouns belonging to them are few and show a tendency to fall under other declensions.

 

 

Declension of a-stem nouns

 

 

Gender Case	Masculine	Neuter
Singular Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative	fisc (fish) fisces fisce fisc	scip (ship) scipes scipe scip
Plural Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative	fiscas fisca fiscum fiscas	scipu scipa scipum scipu

 

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

Declension of n-stem nouns

 

Gender Case	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter
Singular Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative	nama (name) naman naman naman	tunge (tongue) tungan tungan tungan	eaзe (eye) eaзan eaзan eaзе
Plural Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative	naman namena namum naman	tungan tungena tungum tungan	eaзan eaзеna eaзum eaзan

 

 

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 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), mūs (mouse, feminine) originally had no stem-suffix and the grammatical ending was added directly to the root. As the 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 theses forms. Later the ending was dropped and vowel interchange remained the only means of differentiating the given forms in the paradigm. The feminine nouns with the short root had the ending -u in the Nominative and the Accusative Singular, and -e in the Nominative and the Accusative Plural. The endings of the rest of 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.

 

Declension of root-stem nouns

 

Gender Case	Masculine	Feminine
Singular Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative	man (man) mannes man man	mūs mūse mýs mūs
Plural Nominative Genitive Dative Accusative	men manna mannum men	mýs mūsa mūsum mýs

 

 

Old English Grammar The Old English Noun

Old English nouns were declined – that is, the ending of the noun changed to reflect its function in the sentence. There were five major cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and instrumental.

The nominative case indicated the subject of the sentence, for example se cyning means 'the king'. It was also used for direct address. Adjectives in the predicate (qualifying a noun on the other side of 'to be') were also in the nominative.

The accusative indicated the direct object of the sentence, for example Æþelbald lufode þone cyning means "Æþelbald loved the king", where Æþelbald is the subject and the king is the object. Already the accusative had begun to merge with the nominative; it was never distinguished in the plural, or in a neuter noun.

The genitive case indicated possession, for example the þæs cyninges scip is "the ship of the king" or "the king's ship".

The dative case indicated the indirect object of the sentence, for example hringas þæm cyninge means "rings for the king" or "rings to the king". There were also several verbs which took direct objects in the dative.

The instrumental case indicated an instrument used to achieve something, for example lifde sweorde, "he lived by the sword", where sweorde is the instrumental form of sweord. During the Old English period, the instrumental was falling out of use, having largely merged with the dative. Only pronouns and strong adjectives retained separate forms for the instrumental.

 

There were different endings depending on whether the noun was in the singular (for example, hring 'one ring') or plural (for example, hringas 'many rings').

 

Nouns are also categorised by grammatical gender – masculine, feminine, or neuter. Masculine and neuter words generally share their endings. Feminine words have their own subset of endings. The plural does not distinguish between genders.

 

Furthermore, Old English nouns are divided as either strong or weak. Weak nouns have their own endings. In general, weak nouns are easier than strong nouns, since they had begun to lose their declensional system. However, there is a great deal of overlap between the various classes of noun: they are not totally distinct from one another.

The traditional approach of Historical linguistics treats OE as a stage in the historical development of Germanic languages. From this point of view, such types of nouns as ā – stems, ō-stems, i-stems, u-stems, n-stems etc. are distinguished, although there is little in the OE forms themselves to show any traces of these stems. As you remember, nouns in Proto-Indo-European had a special sound added to the root, perhaps to distinguish different classes of nouns. Later that sound disappeared merging with the grammatical ending and changing it, since the names of Germanic and Old English noun classes (ā – stems, ō-stems…) show which sound was added to the noun root in prehistoric times.

 

 

Strong Nouns

Strong Masculine Noun stān (stone) (a-stem)

stān	Singular	Plural
Nominative	(se) stān	(þā) stānas
Genitive	(þæs) stānes	(þāra) stāna
Dative	(þæm) stāne	(þæm) stānum
Accusative	(þone) stān	(þā) stānas

 

 

 

Strong Neuter Nouns

There are two basic patterns for strong neuter nouns.

 

Strong Neuter Noun scip (ship) (a-stem)

scip	Singular	Plural
Accusative	(þæt) scip	(þā) scipu
Genitive	(þæs) scipes	(þāra) scipa
Dative	(þæm) scipe	(þæm) scipum
Nominative	(þæt) scip	(þā) scipu

 

 

Strong Neuter Noun word (word) (a-stem)

word	Singular	Plural
Nominative	(þæt) word	(þā) word
Genitive	(þæs) wordes	(þāra) worda
Dative	(þæm) worde	(þæm) wordum
Accusative	(þæt) word	(þā) word

 

Notice that they differ only in the Nominative and Accusative plural. Looking at the stems of the two words, you should notice that scip is short-stemmed (contains a short vowel followed by one consonant), and that word is long-stemmed (such stems either contain a long vowel, or, as in word, the vowel is followed by more than one consonant).

So we have a rule that long-stemmed neuter a-nouns drop the nominative and accusative plural "-u" endings.

 

 

Strong Feminine Noun giefu (gift) (ō – stem)

giefu	Singular	Plural
Nominative	(sēo) giefu	(þā) giefa
Genitive	(þære) giefe	(þāra) giefa
Dative	(þære) giefe	(þæm) giefum
Accusative	(þā) giefe	(þā) giefa

 

Irregular strong nouns:

• Nouns with the vowel æ in the singular change it into a in the plural. E.g.: dæg (day, Masc., Nom., sg) – dagas (Nom., pl).

• Nouns of ja- stems are a special type of a-stems. Their root vowel undergoes mutation under the influence of an original –j- in the stem. Their case endings do not differ very much from a-stem nouns; some masculine and neuter ja-nouns end in -e in their base form. These drop the -e and add normal endings.

• wa-stems are another special type of a-stems. The nominative and accusative singular of the masculine nouns and the nominative and accusative singular and plural of the neuter ones end in –u.

• jō- and wō-stems are special types of ō-stems (feminine strong nouns).

 

A few nouns follow the -u declension, with an entirely different set of endings. Among these are masculine and feminine substantives. Nouns with a short root syllable have in the nominative and accusative singular the ending –u; those with a long one have no ending at all.

 

Strong -u declension

sunu (son) (Masc.)

feld (field) (Fem.)

	Singular		Plural
	Masculine	Feminine	Masculine	Feminine
Nominative	sunu	feld	suna	felda
Genitive	suna	felda	suna	felda
Dative	suna	feld	sunum	feldum
Accusative	sunu	feld	suna	felda

 

i-stems nounscomprise nouns of all three genders. The masculine and neuter i-stems donotmush differ in their declension from the a-stems, and the feminine ones do not much differ from theō-stems. The root vowel has undergone mutation.

sige (m., ‘victory’);

cwēn (f., woman).

	Singular		Plural
	Masculine	Feminine	Masculine	Feminine
Nominative	sige	cwēn	sige(as)	cwēne, cwēna
Genitive	sige	cwēne	sigea	cwēna
Dative	siges	cwēne	sigum	cwēnum
Accusative	sige	cwēn	sige(as)	cwēne, cwēna

Weak Nouns

Weak nouns are so called because they have less variation in form than the so-called "strong nouns." They are not a very numerous group of nouns, but they are frequently encountered, and it helps to know the declension.

 

Weak Masculine Noun cnapa (boy)

cnapa	Singular	Plural
Nominative	cnapa	cnapan
Genitive	cnapan	cnapena
Dative	cnapan	cnapum
Accusative	cnapan	cnapan

 

 

Weak Feminine Noun sunne (sun)

sunne	Singular	Plural
Nominative	sunne	sunnan
Genitive	sunnan	sunnena
Dative	sunnan	sunnum
Accusative	sunnan	sunnan

 

Weak Neuter Noun ēage (eye)

ēage	Singular	Plural
Nominative	(þæt) ēage	(þā) ēagan
Genitive	(þæs) ēagan	(þāra) ēagena
Dative	(þæm) ēagan	(þæm) ēagum
Accusative	(þæt) ēage	(þā) ēagan

 

Root –stems nounare present in all Germanic languages, these noun never had any stem-forming suffix, so the the case endings were added on immediately to the root. These nouns represent the oldest type.

 

mann (m., man) mūs (f., mouse)	Singular		Plural
	Masculine	Feminine	Masculine	Feminine
Nominative	mann	mūs	menn	ms
Accusative	mann	mūs, ms	menn	mūsa
Genitive	mannes	ms	manna	mūsum
Dative	menn	mūs	mannum	ms

 

r-stemsare represented by a few masculine and feminine nouns denoting relationship.

Masculine r-stem noun fæder (father)

	Singular	Plural
Nominative	fæder (father)	fæderas
Accusative	fæder, fæderes	fædera
Genitive	fæder	fæderum
Dative	fæder	fæderas