10.Old English Morphology.

Old English morphology was that of a typical inflected if somewhat simplified Indo-European language. Parts of speech included noun, pronoun, adjective, numeral and verb; all of which formed their paradigmatic forms by inflections, suffixes, and sound interchange. There were no analytical formations. Nouns in Old English retained only four of the Indo-European 8 cases, adjectives, partly pronouns and numerals agreed with the nouns they modified in number, gender and case. The Old English had two adjective declensions, a strong and a weak. The weak forms were used generally after demonstrative pronouns, and possessive adjectives; the strong were used independently. The comparison of adjectives and adverbs in Germanic differs from that in the Romance languages. Generally, -r and -st endings are added: long, longer, longest.

Free stress became recessive, and precise accent rules became dominant, with the first root syllable carrying the stress. Umlauting, a process of modifying vowel sounds, took place extensively in formation of paradigmatic forms (man - men; f) and word building. A system of strong verbs developed as the result of vowel alternation (ablaut), and a unique way of forming the past tense using dental suffix for weak verbs (ealdian – ealdode- to grow old) was created.

11. Old English Noun. Categories of oe Noun

Nouns in Old English had the categories of number, gender and case. Gender is actually not a grammatical 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 - mann, fæder, abbod (man, father, abbot). Those denoting females should be all feminine, - modor, sweostor, abbudissa (mother,sister, abbess). Yet there are curious exceptions, such words as mæʒden (maid), wīf (wife) are neuter (compare in Ukrainian хлоп’я, дівча). And wīfman (woman) is masculine, because the second element of the compound is masculine. The gender of the other nouns is unmotivated. The same form may have two different meanings distinguished by gender, for example lēod masc. “man”, but lēod (fem.), «people».

There are two numbers - singular and plural, and four cases - nominative, genitive, dative and accusative. Comparing with what we have now we can see that 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 the words in an utterance, whereas gender disappeared altogether.

In traditional historical studies the nouns are divided into classes according to the former stem-forming suffixes, which were hardly visible even in Gothic, the language separated in time from the Old English by centuries. The remnants of these suffixes are even more vague in Old English. Still, these stem-forming suffixes determined what inflections were taken by the nouns. Though lost in Old English they still worked in the way the case and number forms were made.

Without knowing the original structure of the nouns in the language we can hardly explain the exceptions in the formations of plural of the present-day English nouns. Why goose -pl. geese, but moose -pl. moose, foot - feet but boot — boots, sheep — pl. sheep, but sheet – sheet.

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

The Strong Declension

includes nouns that had had a vocalic stem-forming suffix. Former suffixes (a,o,i,u) are no longer found in Old English, moreover, even very paradigms of these groups of nouns were already splitting .

-a-stems

They may be either masculine or neuter. The difference between the two genders may be seen only in the nominative.

Old English nouns a-stems neuter with long vowel might give an unchanged plural, and the noun sheep being an exception from the general rule of formation the plural form goes back to the Old English period.

Examples of Old English а-stems are: masculine: earrn (arm), eorl (earl), , biscop (bishop), heofon (heaven) etc.

neuter: word (word), bearn (child), feoh (cattle),hūs (house).

There are some peculiarities of declension of the nouns that had originally -j- or

-w- in the stem (they are called -ja-stems and -wa-stems); they may preserve this sound in declension; but otherwise the differences are minor.

Examples of -ja- stems are: hyse (young warrior), fiscere (fisherman), net (net), bedd (bed).

The nouns belonging to ō -stems are all feminine. In the form of the nominative 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:

The nouns of this group: caru (care), scamu (shame).

In this group of nouns the suffix - ō - may also be accompanied by additional і and w, that is -jō - and -wō - stems will give variants of declension.

In Ukrainian similar additional sound і gives such formations as стаття, копія.

The nouns formerly having -i-sufix, 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 masculine and neuter nouns of the -a- stems, and feminine noun endings repeated the endings of the -o-stems.

The nouns of this group are: masculine: mere (sea), mete (food); neuter: sife (sieve), hilt (hilt); feminine: wiht (thing), hyde (hide), woruld (world, age).

Nouns belonging to -u-stems may be of masculine or feminine gender:

The nouns of this group are:masculine: wudu (wood), medu (honey); feminine: nosu (nose), hand (hand).

-o- and -u- stems in Old English had only three distinctive endings both for the singular and the plural and that was sufficient for proper communication. -i- stems, on the other hand, illustrate the tendency to dissolution of the former classes of nouns and a certain tendency for regrouping the declensions according to the gender of the noun.

Weak Declension

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 Old English, but disappeared in the nominative case. -n- stem nouns may be of all three genders.

Examples:masculine: wita (wise man), steorra (star), flota (ship, fleet), neuter: cofa (chamber, repositary). feminine: heorte (heart), sunne (sun), hearpe (harp).

Root Stems. This group comprises the nouns that never had a stem suffix.The group was not numerous, but the words belonging to it were characterised by high frequency of use.

The nouns of this class are:all compound nouns containing the morpheme man: wimman (woman), ealdorman (nobleman, leader),and also f ōt (foot), mūs (mouse). The nouns belonging to -r-stems were of masculine and feminine gender, the group is a closed system. Ex. are 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 had this suffix in older times, in Old English due to rhotacism they changed it into occasional appearance of -r- sound in indirect cases. They are all neuter.

Comparatively new for Old English are several substantivated participles forming a separate group of -nd- stems. They 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 (they may form their plural form without any ending). Here belong such words as wealdend (ruler), scyppend (creator) etc.