History of English Noun

Epigraph

Without knowing the original structure of the nouns in the language we can hardly explain the exceptions in the present-day words.

Plan

1. Categories of Noun

2. Classifications of Old E Noun

3. Noun in ME

4. Noun in Early MnE

Main notions number, gender, case, stem, grammatical archaism, grammatical barbarism

Main names Randolph Quirk and C.L. Wrenn

Old English morphology was that of a typical inflected i f 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. Free stress (accent) 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; fat -fef) and word building.

1. Categories of 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 (the other nominal parts of speech have gender forms); but case and number had a set of endings. Nouns used to denote males are normally masculine - mann, faeder, brodor, abbod (man, father, brother, abbot). Naturally, those denoting females should be all feminine, - modor, sweostor, cwene, abbudissa (mother, sister, queen, abbess). Yet there are curious exceptions, such words as magden (maid), wif (wife) are neuter (compare in Ukrainian хлоп 'я, д1вча). And wifrnan (woman) is masculine, because the second element of the compound is masculine. The gender of the other nouns is unmotivated, the same as in Ukrainian. There are two numbers – singular and plural, and four cases-nominative, genitive, dative and accusative.

2. Classifications of OE Noun

All the nouns can be classified according to the different principles. In traditional historical studies they are divided into classes according to 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. They had Strong (Vocalic) declension, Weak (consonant) declension, root stems and some minor groups. The general number of stems was 9.

1. The Strong Declension

includes nouns that had had a voсalic 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 Yet the traditional classification will look like this.

1) -a-stems

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

Nom. Gen. Dat. Acc.

m

Sing stan stanes stane stan

Plur stanas stana stanum stanas (stone)

There could be slight difference between short and long syllables.

So, we can see that 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. If there was a mutated vowel in the stem, this sound might be preserved only in the singular. AE changed into A in plural (daeg)

Examples of Old English a-stems are: masculine: earm (arm), eorl (earl), helm (helmet; protection), hrinj (ring), mud (mouth), jear (year), biscop (bishop), cyninj (king), ham (home), heofon (heaven) etc.

neuter: dor (door), hoof (hoof), word (word), feoh (cattle), jear (year), hus (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 (bearu bearwes bearwe – wood, comp. bor in Russian).

The nouns of this class were very numerous and were characterized by high frequency of use in Old English, so this paradigm is highly relevant to the further development of this part of speech.

2) о -stems

Nouns belonging to о -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:

Nom. Gen Dat. Acc.

Singular talu tale tale tale

Plural tala tala talum tala - tale

Other nouns of this group: caru (care), scamu (shame), sawol (soul), lufu love).

In this group of nouns the suffix -o- may also be accompanied by additional j and w, that is -jo- and -wo- stems will give variants of declension:

In Ukrainian similar additional sound / gives such formations as стаття, котя.

3) -i-stem

The nouns formerly having -i-suffix, 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.

Nom. Gen Dat. Acc

Other nouns of this group are: masculine: mere (sea), mete (food), jiest (guest), drync (drink), jebeorscipe (feast), deodscype (people)

neuter: sife (sieve), hilt (hi\t),flsesc (flesh), yfel (evil), mynster (monastery)

feminine: wiht (thing), hyde (hide), woruld (world, age), frumsceaft (first creation), fyrd (army)

In Ukrainian the sound / caused the palatalization of the precious consonant and was lost: тесть, ггстъ.

4) -u-stems

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

m f

Singular

Nom. sunu duru

Gen suna dura

Dat. suna dura

Ace. sunu duru

Plural

Nom. suna dura

Gen suna dura

Dat. sunum durum

Ace. suna dura

son door

Other nouns of this group are:

masculine: wudu (wood), medu (honey), weald (forest), sumor (summer), feld (field), heoro (sword), hefe (weight).

feminine: nosu (nose),//0r (floor), hand (hand), hiendu (dishonour), sal (rope), swadu (way, path).

2. Weak Declension

5) - n-stems

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 (compare Ukrainian nouns like імя племя), -п- stem nouns may be of all three genders. But actually no difference in declension of nouns of different genders can be found.

Nom. Gen Dat. Ace.

m

nama naman naman naman

naman namena namum naman

name

f

eare earan earan earan

earan earena earum earan ear

Other examples of this group are:

masculine: juma (man), wita (wise man), steorra (star), тага (moon), dema (judge), flota (ship, fleet), intinja (case), pieja (play, game), draca (dragon), hara (hare), oxa (ox), neuter: eaje (eye), cofa (chamber, repositary). feminine: eorde (earth), heorte (heart), sunne (sun), hearpe (harp), midde (middle), cirice (church), cwene (woman), flan (arrow).

Nouns belong to the group of -n- stems were numerous, and later there was a not very strong, but nevertheless pronounced, tendency to adopt the ending of the plural form by other nouns. Due to this tendency such hybrids as brethren and children appeared in Middle English and are preserved up to now.

6. Root Stems.

This group comprises the nouns that never had a stem suffix; hence had a mutated root vowel, for formerly case endings might have had a front vowel, which no longer was present in Old English. The group was not numerous, but the words belonging to it were characterised by high frequency of use - they were the nouns used in everyday speech therefore remained the most conservative - a group of exceptions wit mutated root vowel preserved the majority of nouns belonging to this class.

m

Singular

mann mannes menn mann

menn manna mannum menn

go:s go:se ge:s go:s

gEs go:sa go:sum ge:s

scrud scrudes scryd scrud

scrudu scruda scrudum scrudu clothing

Other nouns of this class are:

all compound nouns containing the morpheme man: wimman (woman), saemann (seaman, wiking), ealdorman (nobleman, leader),

and also to∂ (tooth), fot (foot), mus (mouse), lus (louse), boc (book), ac (oak), .

7) -r-stems

The nouns belonging to -r-stems were of masculine and feminine gender, the group is a closed system. It included only of the terms of kinship. The endings here are scarce, a distinctive feature is that the dative case singular had a mutated vowel.

Other nouns are dohtor (daughter), sweostor (sister) Such nouns existed in other languages, too. Ukrainian noun мати might be mentioned as a relic of former -r- stems (мате/л), and in Russian мать and дочь preserved the -r- suffix in plural and in indirect cases.

8) -s- stems

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

cild, cildru cilda, cildra cildum cild, cildru child

So, in the present-day plural form children we find the remains of the Old Endlish stem-forming suffix -s- turned through rhotacism into -r-. The -en-suffix was added later, in Middle English, by analogy with the inflection of another influential group of nouns. Although not very numerous, it has left traces of the former stem-forming suffix in present-day Ukrainian and Russian, too (небо - небеса, небесный, чудо - чудеса, чудесный).

9) -nd- stems

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 the paradigm of the noun looks like following:

Nom. Gen. Dat. Ace.

Singular freond freondes freonde, freond

Plural

freondas, friend, freond freonda freondum

freondas, friend, freond friend

Here belong also such words as feond (accuser), wealdend (ruler), wijend (warrior), scyppend (creator), brimlidend (seafarer) etc.

The morphological system can be represented differently, if we take into account only the existing Old English noun forms. Nevertheless, though it might seem more logical, the system does not become simpler, and what is more then the chain of systematic changes seems to be broken. Randolph Quirk and C.L. Wrenn (Old English Grammar London 1955), for instance, suggest the following classification:

A - General Masculine Declension - cyning (king), stan (stone), faseder (father)

В - General Neuter Declension - scip (ship), land (land), wite (punishment)

С - General Feminine Declension - talu (tale), gjlof (glove)

D - the -an Declension - juma (man),

E - Irregular Declensions: (a) - a-plurals sunu (son), hand (hand)

(b) - -ru -plurals AEG egg), lamb (lamb)

(c) - uninflected plurals sceap (sheep), brodor (brother), ridend (rider)

(d) - mutated plurals:/0/ (foot), mus (mouse), lus (louse)

Date: 2015-01-29; view: 3908