3. The category of declension

According to the traditional view OE nouns had strong declension, weak declension and root declension. The strong declension includes nouns with vocalic stems (-a-, -o-, -i-, -u-). The weak declension includes -n- stems only.

The first of declension was called -strong declension. The following nouns belonged to this type of declension.

1. nouns of masculine and neuter gender with a stem-building suffix -a-;

2. nouns of feminine gender with a stem-building suffix -o-;

3. nouns of all genders (masculine, feminine and neuter) with stem-building suffix -i-.

The second type of declension of nouns was called weak declension. The nouns with stem-building consonant -n- belonged to this type of declension.

The third type of declension was called root declension. The nouns without any stem-building suffix belonged to this group.

The category of Gender. OE nouns had three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter). As a rule, the grammatical gender of nouns depended on the stem-building -o- (but in Germanic -a-) shows that the noun belongs to masculine gender and neuter gender: e. g 1. woulf (OE); 2. lupus (Lat.); 3. волк (Rus.).

The stem-building suffix -a- shows that the noun belongs to feminine gender: e. g. aqua (Lat.) – вода; caru (OE) – забота. But more often, the form of a noun didn’t show the grammatical gender. This information had adjectives and pronouns.

4. The System of Cases in oe period and types of Declension

There were four cases: Nominative, Genitive, Dative and Accusative.

Table 1

Strong Declension of OE Nouns

(vocalic stems -a-, -o-, -u-, -i-) (a-stem (inducing Stem))

Singular

Case	Masculine	Neuter
		Short-stemmed	Long-stemmed
N. G. D. Ac.	hlāford (n. m. a.) hlāford-es hlāford-e hlāford NE – lord	scip (n. n. a.) scip-es scip-e scip NE – ship	scēāp (n. n. a.) scēāp-es scēāp-e scēāp NE – sheep
	Note -ja-, -wa- variants of a-stem
Case	Plural
N. G. D. Ac.	hlāford-as hlāford-a hlāford-um hlāford-as	scip-u scip-a scip-um scip-u	sceap (u)* sceap-a sceap-um sceap (-u-)
	*u was lost in the course of time

As you can see from this table, the inflexion were the some in all cases except Nominative and Accusative in plural form. The plural form of the noun of the neuter gender has the inflexion -u-, because the stem syllable in the word “scip” is short. If the stem syllable is long (in the nouns of neuter gender) the inflexion was lost in the course of time in Nominative case and Accusative case.

The long system is not only diphthongs but the combination of a vowel with two consonants (one of them is sonant -r-).

Case	Singular	Plural
N. G. D. Ac.	word (n. n. a.) word-es word-e word	word word-a word-um word

Table 2

Strong Declension of OE Nouns -o- stem

(-jo-, -wo-) – stem (inducting stem)

Case	Singular	Plural
N. G. D. Ac.	caru (n. f. o.) car-e car-e car-e	car-a car-a (-eu) car-um car-a

The nouns of feminine gender belong to this group of nouns.

Table 3

Strong Declension of OE Nouns -i- stem

(masculine, feminine, neuter)

Case	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
N. G. D. Ac.	mete mete-s mete mete	mete-as met-a met-um mete-as	hilt hilt-es hilt-e hilt-e	hilt-as hilt-a hilt-um hilt-as

Table 4

U-stem Declension

(masculine, feminine but without any grammatical discrimination)

Case	Single		Plural
	Short-stem.	Long-stemmed	Short-stemmed	Long-stemmed
N. G. D. Ac.	sunu sun-a sun-a sunu	fēld fēld-a fēld-a fēld	sun-a sun-a sun-um sun-a	fēld-a fēld-a fēld-um fēld-a
	NE - son	NE - field

Table 5

Weak declension

(consonant declension n-stem)

Case	Singular			Plural
	Masc.	Neut.	Femin.	All genders*
N. G. D. Ac.	nama nama-n nama-n nama-n	ēāre ēār-an ēār-an ēār-an	t un -e t un -an t un -an t un -an	nam-an* nam-ena nam-um nam-an
	NE - name	NE - ear	NE - tongue
*In plural the endings of the nouns of all the three degrees coincided.

Another name for Strong Declension is Vocal Stem Declension; for Weak Declension – Consonant Stem Declension.

Expert the strong and weak declensions of nouns there was the so-called root-declension in OE. The nouns of all genders belonged to this type of declension. The number of such nouns was not great, but some of them are still in NE.

They form a group of nouns which form their plural form by means of changing the root-vowel, but not by means of ending -s-. E. g.: man-men, goose-geese.

Table 6

Root-stem Declension of OE Nouns

Case	Singular		Plural
N. G. D. Ac.	fōt fōt-es fet fōt	mūs mūs-es m s mūs	fēt fōt-a fōtum fēt	m s mus-a musum m s
	NE - foot	NE - mouse	NE - feet	NE - mice

In the course of time fot-es => fot, according to the palatal mutation (under the influence of “i” (e)).

The result was

Case	Singular	Case	Plural
N. Ac.	fōt	N. Ac.	fēt

Some declensions were inducing, others – non- inducing. Inducing declensions were the most productive ones (a-stem), (o-stem).