*For more examples, consult “History of English” by Rastorguyeva, pp.98-99

Neut. a-stems differed from Masc. in the pl of the Nom. and Acc. cases. Instead of-as they took -u for short stems (that is nouns with a short root-syllable) and did not add any inflection in the long-stemmed variant -- see Nom. and Acc. pl of scip and dзor in the table. Consequently, long-stemmed Neuters had homonymous sg and pl forms: dзor -- dзor, likewise sceap--sceap, ?ing - ?ing, hus--hus. This peculiarity of Neut. a-stems goes back to some phonetic changes in final unaccented syllables which have given rise to an important grammatical feature: an instance of regular homonymy or neutralisation of number distinctions in the noun paradigm. (Traces of this group of a-stems have survived as irregular pl forms in Mod E: sheep, deer, swine.)

wa- and ja-stems differed from pure a-stems in some forms, as their endings contained traces of the elements -j- and -w-. Nom. and Acc. sg could end in -e which had developed from the weakened -j-, though in some nouns with a doubled final consonant it was lost -- cf. OE bridd (NE bird); in some forms -j- is reflected as -i- or -ig- e.g. Nom. here, Dat. herie, herige or herge ('army'). Short-stemmed wa-stems had -u in the Nom. and Acc. sg which had developed from the element -w- but was lost after a long syllable (in the same way as the plural ending of neuter a-stems described above); cf. OE bearu (NE bear) and cnзo; -w- is optional but appears regularly before the endings of the oblique cases (see the declension of cnзo in Table 2).

o-stems were all Fem., so there was no further subdivision according to gender. The variants with -j- and -w- decline like pure o-stems except that -w- appears before some endings, e.g. Nom. sceadu, the other cases -- sceadwe (NE shadow). The difference between short-and long-stemmed o-stems is similar to that between respective a-stems: after a short syllable the ending -u is retained, after a long syllable it is dropped: wund, talu. Disyllabic o-stems, like a-stems, lost their second vowel in some case forms: Nom. ceaster, the other cases ceastre ('camp'), NE -caster, -Chester--a component of place-names). Like other nouns, o-stems could have an interchange of voiced and voiceless fricative consonants as allophones in intervocal and final position: glof--glofe [f>v] (NE glove). Among the forms of o-stems there occurred some variant forms with weakened endings or with endings borrowed from the weak declension -- with the element -n- wundena alongside wunda. Variation increased towards the end of the OE period.

The other vocalic stems, i-stems and u-stems, include nouns of different genders. Division into genders breaks up i-stems into three declensions, but is irrelevant for u-stems: Masc. and Fem. u-stems decline alike, e.g. Fem. duru (NE door) had the same forms as Masc. sunu shown in the table. The length of the root-syllable is important for both stems; it accounts for the endings in the Nom. and Acc. in the same way as in other classes: the endings -e, -u are usually preserved in short-stemmed nouns and lost in long-stemmed.

Comparison of the i-stems with a-stems reveals many similarities. Neut. i-stems are declined like Neut. ja-stems; the inflection of the Gen. for Masc. and Neut. i-stems is the same as in a-stems -es; alongside pl forms in -e we find new variant forms of Masc. nouns in -as, e. g. Nom., Acc. pl --winas 'friends' (among Masc. i-stems only names of peoples regularly formed their pl in the old way: Dene, Engle, NE Danes, Angles). It appears that Masc. i-stems adopted some forms from Masc. a-stems, while Neut. i-stems were more likely to follow the pattern of Neut. a-stems; as for Fem. i-stems, they resembled o-stems, except that the Acc. and Nom. were not distinguished as with other i-stems.

The most numerous group of the consonantal stems were n-stems or the weak declension, n-stems had only two distinct forms in the sg: one form for the Nom. case and the other for the three oblique cases; the element -n- in the inflections of the weak declension was a direct descendant of the old stem suffix -n, which had acquired a new, grammatical function, n-stems included many Masc. nouns, such as boga, cnotta, steorra (NE bow, knot, star), many Fem. nouns, e. g. cirice, eor?e, heorte, hl?fdige (NE church, earth, heart, lady) and only a few Neut. nouns: зaga (NE eye).

The pronoun

OE pronouns fell roughly under the same main classes as modem pronouns: personal, demonstrative, interrogative and indefinite. As for the other groups -- relative, possessive and reflexive -- they were as yet not fully developed and were not always distinctly separated from the four main classes. The grammatical categories of the pronouns were either similar to those of nouns (in "noun-pronouns") or corresponded to those of adjectives (in "adjective pronouns"). Some features of pronouns were peculiar to them alone.

Personal Pronouns*

OE personal pronouns had three persons, three numbers in the 1st and 2nd p. (two numbers--in the 3rd) and three genders in the 3rd p. The pronouns of the 1st and 2nd p. had suppletive forms like their parallels in other IE languages. The pronouns of the 3rd p., having originated from demonstrative pronouns, had many affinities with the latter.

In OE, while nouns consistently distinguished between four cases, personal pronouns began to lose some of their case distinctions: the forms of the Dat. case of the pronouns of the 1st and 2nd p. were frequently used instead of the Acc.; in fact the fusion of these two cases in the pi was completed in the WS dialect already in Early OE: Acc. eowic and usic were replaced by Dat. eow, us; in the sg usage was variable, but variant forms revealed the same tendency to generalise the form of the Dat. for both case's. This is seen in the following quotation:

Se ?e me geh?lde, se cw?? tф me 'He who healed me, he said to me' -- the first me, though Dat. in form, serves as an Acc. (direct object); the second me is a real Dat.

*See a table of personal pronouns declension at p.103 in “History of English” by Rastorguyeva.

Demonstrative Pronouns

There were two demonstrative pronouns in OE: the prototype of NE that, which distinguished three genders in the sg and had one form for all the genders in the pi. and the prototype of this with the same subdivisions: ?es Masc., ?eos Fem., ?is Neut. and ?as pl. They were declined like adjectives according to a five-case system:

Nom., Gen., Dat., Acc., and Instr. (the latter having a special form only in the Masc., Neut.sg).

Declension of sз, sзo, ??t

The paradigm of the demonstrative pronoun se contained many homonymous forms. Some case endings resembled those of personal pronouns, e.g. -m - Dat. Masc. and Neut. and Dat. pl;

the element -r- in the Dat. and Gen. sg Fem. and in the Gen. pl. These case endings, which do not occur in the noun paradigms, are often referred to as "pronominal" endings (-m, -r-, -t).

The adjective. Grammatical Categories

As stated before, the adjective in OE could change for number, gender and case. Those were dependent grammatical categories or forms of agreement of the adjective with the noun it modified or with the subject of the sentence -- if the adjective was a predicative. Like nouns, adjectives had three genders and two numbers. The category of case in adjectives differed from that of nouns: in addition to the four cases of nouns they had one more case, Instr. It was used when the adjective served as an attribute to a noun in the Dat. case expressing an instrumental meaning -- e.g.: lytle werede 'with (the help of) a small troop'.

Weak and Strong Declension

As in other OG languages, most adjectives in OE could be declined in two ways: according to the weak and to the strong declension. The formal differences between the declensions, as well as their origin, were similar to those of the noun declensions. The strong and weak declensions arose due to the use of several stem-forming suffixes in PG: vocalic a-, o-, u- and i- and consonantal n-. Accordingly, there developed sets of endings of the strong declension mainly coinciding with the endings of a-stems of nouns for adjectives in the Masc. and Neut. and of o-stems -- in the Fem., with some differences between long-and short-stemmed adjectives, variants with j- and w-, monosyllabic and polysyllabic adjectives and some remnants of other stems. Some endings in the strong declension of adjectives have no parallels in the noun paradigms; they are similar to the endings of pronouns: -um for Dat. sg, -ne for Acc. Masc., [r] in some Fem. and pl endings. Therefore the strong declension of adjectives is sometimes called the "pronominal" declension. As for the weak declension, it uses the same markers as (n-stems of nouns except that in the Gen. pl the pronominal ending -ra is often used instead of the weak -ena.

The difference between the strong and the weak declension of adjectives was not only formal but also semantic. Unlike a noun, an adjective did not belong to a certain type of declension. Most adjectives could be declined in both ways. The choice of the declension was determined by a number of factors: the syntactical function of the adjective, the degree of comparison and the presence of noun determiners. The adjective had a strong form when used predicatively and when used attributively without any determiners, e.g.:

?a menn sindon gode 'the men are good'

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

Some adjectives, however, did not conform with these rules.

Degrees of Comparison

Like adjectives in other languages, most OE adjectives distinguished between three degrees of comparison: positive, comparative and superlative. The regular means used to form the comparative and the superlative from the positive were the suffixes -ra and -est/ost. Sometimes suffixation was accompanied by an interchange of the root-vowel.

The adjective god had suppletive forms. Suppletion was a very old way of building the degrees of comparison

god - bettra - bet(e)st,

lytel - l?ssa - l?st.

Lecture 4. OLD ENGLISH GRAMMAR

The OE verb was characterised by many peculiar features. Though the verb had few grammatical categories, its paradigm had a very complicated structure: verbs fell into numerous morphological classes and employed a variety of form-building means. All the forms of the verb were synthetic, as analytical forms were only beginning to appear. The non-finite forms had little in common with the finite forms but shared many features with the nominal parts of speech.

Grammatical Categories of the Finite Verb

The verb-predicate agreed with the subject of the sentence in two grammatical categories: number and person. Its specifically verbal categories were mood and tense. Thus in OE he binde? 'he binds' the verb is in the 3rd p. Pres. Tense Ind. Mood; in the sentence Bringa? me hider ?a 'Bring me those (loaves)' bringa? is in the Imper. Mood pl.

Finite forms regularly distinguished between two numbers: sg and pl. The homonymy of forms in the verb paradigm did not affect number distinctions: opposition through number was never neutralised.

The category of Person was made up of three forms: the 1st, the 2nd and the 3rd. Unlike number, person distinctions were neutralised in many positions. Person was consistently shown only in the Pres. Tense of the Ind. Mood 'In the Past Tense sg of the Ind. Mood the forms of the 1st and 3rd p. coincided and only the 2nd p. had a distinct form. Person was not distinguished in the pl; nor was it shown in the Subj. Mood.

The category of Mood was constituted by the Indicative, Imperative and Subjunctive. There were a few homonymous forms, which eliminated the distinction between the moods: Subj. did not differ from the Ind. in the 1st p. sg Pres. Tense -- here, deme -- and in the 1st and 3rd p. in the Past. The coincidence of the Imper. and Ind. Moods is seen in the pl -- locia?, dema?.

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