12. The oe noun system and its further changes

The OE noun had 2 grammatical or morphological categories: number and case. Nouns distinguished 3 genders. The category of number consisted of 2 members, singular and plural. The noun had 4 cases: Nominative, Genitive, Dative and Accusative.

The Indo-European noun had 3 element structure: root + stand building suffix + ending. In Germanic lang. stand building suffix disappeared. Thus thr germ structure of nouns including the OE consists of 2 elements: root + ending. The OE nouns fell into several types of declension (stems):

a-stem ( -ja, -wa stems→ embraced the nouns belonging to masculine and neuter gender)

ō-stem ( -jo, -wo stems→ embraced the nouns belonging to feminine gender )

u-stem (M,F genders)

i-stem (M,F,N genders)

These stems were called vocalic stems and belonged to so-called strong declension of nouns. The was also weak declension of nouns, embracing n-stem (root stem→ M,F,N genders). If the inflexion included the i-element it caused the mutation in these class of words, mostly in root-stem words: man (sing.)→mani (plural)→men

The a-stem made up the largest group and it was the class of nouns that served as a model for the whole system as time passed. The modern English plural –as comes from the plural noun inflexion: stān – stānas (-es(for genitive case in OE), -s (for possessive case))

	Singular	Plural
Nomin.,Accusat.	-	-as
Genitive	-es	-a
Dative	-e	-um

Gender was short lived. It wasn’t supported either semantically or formally. There were no endings. Result: it was disappeared in the 1^st half of the ME period.

Number - the most stable grammatical category with one significant difference.In NE the noun has the standard plural ending –es ( from -as). While in OE the idea of plurality was shown differently depending on the stem of the noun.

ME changes:

1. The division into stems disappeared

2. Gender disappeared as well

3. The 4-case system is simplified to 2-case system (in phonetics: the reduction of final, unstressed –e in endings led to leveling of various endings; the growing number of prepositions which function like case endings: the gradual fixing of word order: Scandinavian influence on English was especially strong in NE).

13,14 The oe adjective and its further development in me. Degrees of comparison.

In OE the adjectives could change for number, gender and case. They had 3 genders and 2 numbers. In addition to the four cases of nouns they had one more case- Instrumental. The OE adjectives had a very complex paradigm and its most important features were:

• a double system of declension (weak and strong). The choice of declension in each case depended on many factors: - the preceding pronouns which modify the same noun: - the syntactical function of the adjective: - the degree of comparison.

The weak form was employed when the adjective was preceded by a demonstrative pronoun or the Gen.case of personal pronouns and when the adjective form a part of direct address.

Adj. in comparative and superlative degrees were declined as weak ones. The regular means of building comparative and superlative degrees were the suffixes –ra, -ost/-est ; using suffixes + vowel alternations (eald – ieldra - ieldest); suppletive forms in ME (good – better - best). Later in the cause of metathesis ra→re →er

Means of form-building	Positive	Comparative	Superlative	NE
Suffixation	Soft	softra	softost	Soft
Suffixation + vowel interchange	Eald	Ieldra	ieldest	old
Suppletion	micel	māra	mǽst	Much

Some adjectives had parallel sets of forms: with or without a vowel interchange. These sets could arise if the adjective had originally employed both kinds of suffixes; or else the non-mutated vowel was restored on the analogy of the positive degree and other adjectives without sound interchanges.

Suppletion was a very old way of building the degrees of comparison.

(gōd – betera- betst)