Unlike other classes the root-stem nouns such as man (man, masculine), mūs (mouse, feminine) originally had no stem-suffix the grammatical ending was added directly to the root.
Morphological Classification of Nouns. Declensions, the Strong declension.
The OE noun paradigm was composed by the following grammatical categories: gender, number and case.
Of these three gender is a lexico-grammatical category.
The category of gender was formed by the opposition of three genders: masculine, feminine, neuter.
Masculine
Male beings
Lifeless things
Abstract notions
fǣder
hlāf
stenc
sunu
stān
fǣr
cyning
hrōf
nama
Feminine
Female beings
Lifeless things
Abstract notions
mōdor
tunge
trywðu
dohter
meole
huntinʒ
cwen
lufu
Neuter
Living beings
Lifeless things
Abstract notions
hors
eaʒe
mōd
mǣʒden
scip
riht
cicen
Number: singular and plural.
Case: Nominative, Genetive, Dative, Accusative.
Morphological classification of nouns. Declension.
The most remarkable feature of OE nouns was their elaborated system of declensions, which was the sort of morphological classification.
There were 2 respective principle groups of declensions in OE:
1. the vowel declension (strong);
2. the consonant declension (weak).
The Vowel Declension comprises 4 principle paradigms:
- a-stem (with -ja- and -wa- subtypes);
- ō-stem (with -jō- and -wō- subtypes);
- u-stem;
- i-stem.
The Consonant Declension comprises nouns with:
- n-stem;
- r-stem;
- s-stem.
In rare cases the new form was constructed adding the ending directly to the root. These words formed the so-called root-stem declension.
Strong Declension .
a-stems included Masc. and Neut. nouns. About 1/3 of OE nouns were Masc. a-stems, e. g. cniht (NE knight), ham (NE home); examples of Neut. nouns are: lim (NE limb), hus (NE house).
Masculine
A-stem
Wa-stem
singular
plural
singular
plural
Nominative
stān
stān-as
bearu
bear-was
Genetive
stān-es
stān-a
bear-wes
bear-wa
Dative
stān-e
stān-um
bear-we
bear-wum
Accusative
stān
stān-as
bearu
bear-was
Note should be taken of the inflections -esof the Gen. sg. and -as of the Nom. pl. Towards the end of the OE period they began to be added to an increasing number of nouns, which originally belonged to other stems. These inflections are the prototypes and sources of the ModE ‘s of the Possessive case and -(e)s markers of the plural.
Neut. a-stems differed from Masc. in the plural 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. 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 neutralization of number distinctions in the noun paradigm.
Neuter
Short stem
Long stem
singular
plural
singular
plural
Nominative
scip
scip-u
þing
þing
Genetive
scip-es
scip-a
þing-es
þing-a
Dative
scip-e
scip-um
þing-e
þing-um
Accusative
scip
scip-u
þing
þing
O-stems
o-stems were all Fem., so there was no further subdivision according to gender. The variants with -jo- and -wo- decline like pure o-stems except that -w- appears before some endings. 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.
singular
plural
Nominative
wund
wund-a
Genetive
wund-e
wund-a
Dative
wund-e
wund-um
Accusative
wund-e
wund-a
The other vocalic stems, i-stems and u-stems, include nouns of different genders. Division into genders breaks up i-stems into three declensions. Comparison of the i-stems with a-stems reveals many similarities. 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.
2019-08-13
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