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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


Date: 2015-01-29; view: 2200


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The Old English Sound System | Strong Neuter Nouns
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