REPUBLIC OF MOLODOVA

MINESTRY OF EDUCATION

“ION CREANGA ”STATE PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE

ENGLISH PHILOLOGY DEPARTMENT

REPORT

THE NOUN AND THE ADJECTIVE IN OLD ENGLISH PERIOD AND THEIR DECLENSION

SUBMITTED BY:

SCIENTIFIC ADVISER:

CHISINAU 2015

A language whose word patterns show their grammatical function in the sentence by being declined is called an inflected language. So, Old English is an  inflected language. A set of declined forms of the same word pattern is called a declension and it becomes more clear and obvious in the following categories:

Case

Gender

Number

Noun Case

The different grammatical functions a language recognizes are called cases. Of eight Proto-Indo-European cases, Old English keeps just four which were inherited from the Common Germanic language. In fact, several of original Indo-European noun cases were weak enough to be lost practically in all branches of the family, coinciding with other, stronger cases. The ablative case often was assimilated by the genitive (in Greek, Slavic, Baltic, and Germanic), locative usually merged with dative (Italic, Celtic, Greek), and so did the instrumental case. That is how four cases appeared in Germanic and later in Old English - nominative, genitive, accusative and dative. These four were the most ancient and therefore stable in the system of the Indo-European morphology.

The problem of the Old English instrumental case is rather strange - this case arises quite all of a sudden among Germanic tongues and in some forms is used quite regularly (like in demonstrative pronouns). In Gothic the traces of instrumental and locative though can be found, but are considered as not more than relics. But the Old English must have "recalled" this archaic instrumental, which existed, however, not for too long and disappeared already in the 10th century, even before the Norman conquest and transformation of the English language into its Middle stage.

As for other cases, here is a little pattern of their usage in the Old English syntax.

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 case indicated the direct object of the sentence, the object immediately affected by the action (what?)

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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, whose? of what? 

Also after the expression meaning full of , free of , worthy of , guilty of,   etc. 

For example: the þæs cyninges scip is "the ship of the king" or "the king's ship". It also indicated partitive nouns.

The dative case indicated the indirect object of the sentence; the object towards which the action is directed. To whom or for whom the object was meant.

For example: hringas þæm cyninge means "rings for the king" or "rings to the king". Here, the word cyning is in its dative form: cyninge.

There were also several verbs that took direct objects in the dative.  After the after the verbs like "say to smb", "send smb", "give to smb"; "known to smb", "necessary for smth / smb", "close to smb", "peculiar for smth". Also in the expressions like   from the enemy, against the wind, on the shore. 

All genitive plural forms end in -a All dative plural forms end in –um

In Modern English, there are three cases. They are the subjective, the possessive, and the objective.

Singular Old English Approximate English TranslationNominative stān stoneAccusative stān stoneGenitive stānes of the stoneDative stāne to/for the stone

Plural Old English Approximate English Translation

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Nominative stānas stonesAccusative stānas stonesGenitive stāna of the stonesDative stānum to/for the stones

The stem of the Old English word is clearly visible. It's stān to which different endings are being attached. The case endings are:

Singular PluralNominative - -asAccusative - -asGenitive -es -aDative -e -um

nouns with anomalous plural -en.

In Modern English, there are three cases. They are the subjective, the possessive, and the objective.

Noun Gender

All Old English nouns possess what is called "gender". That is, a noun will be masculine, feminine, or neuter. Don't confuse this kind of grammatical gender with biological gender. There is nothing biologically feminine about nouns which are grammatically feminine, nothing biologically masculine about nouns which are grammatically masculine, and nothing biologically neuter about nouns which are grammatically neuter. It's just that nouns have a feature which we call gender by convention. And this is a feature which cannot change in a noun. A noun may change its case or number, but a noun will never change its gender. This is a fixed feature, and you must be told what gender a noun is when you look it up in the dictionary.

Three genders are strong enough, and only northern dialects can sometimes lose their distinction. But in fact the lose of genders in Middle English happened due to the drop of the case inflections, when words could no longer be distinguished by its endings.

Actually we don’t have gender in English.

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Strong and Weak Nouns

All Old English nouns were divided into strong and weak ones, the same as verbs in Germanic. While the first had a branched declension, special endings for different numbers and cases, the weak declension was represented by nouns which were already starting to lose their declension system. The majority of noun stems in Old English should be referred to the strong type. Here are the tables for each stems with some comments - the best way of explaining the grammar.

Strong Nouns

Noun Classes

Like adjectives and pronouns, Old English nouns are declined: different endings are attached to the stem of a word, and these endings indicate what case a word belongs to (and therefore, what grammatical function that word is fulfilling in a sentence.

Old English nouns are divided into three main groups, strong, weak, and "minor," based on the noun's stem and the endings that each noun takes in different grammatical cases.

A useful rule of thumb is that nouns whose stems end with a consonant are strong, while nouns whose stems end with a vowell (except for "u") are weak (we will learn the paradigms for weak nouns in the next chapter).

The strong declension is itself subdivided into first, second, and third declensions, which are also called "masculine," "neuter," and "feminine." We'll call label the declensions first declension, second declension and third declension (weak nouns, the subject of Chapter 14, are often called fourth declension) but we'll also put in the "masculine," "neuter," and "feminine" labels since these are used so frequently in dictionaries and editions of Old English texts.

Strong First Declensions (Masculine) Nouns

While we'll use first declension to label these nouns which end in consonants; other grammars, dictionaries and editions will call the masculine. You may think of this group of nouns as the "spear-stone-king" group, since all of those words have traditional masculine associations and all are masculine strong first declension nouns.

Some Strong First Declension (Masculine) Nouns:

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Old EnglishModern English

gar spearstan stonecyning kingfugol birddream joy

You'll find the endings for these nouns in the table below

(a dash - in the paradigm indicates that the stem gets no additional ending)

 

Strong First Declension (Masculine) Nouns Paradigm

Case SingularPluralNominative - asGenitive es aAccusative - asDative and Instrumental

e um

Strong First Declension (Masculine) Singulars: Examples

Case Old English Translation

Nominative cyning king (subject)

Genitive cyninges of the king

Accusative cyning king (direct object)

Dative and Instrumental cyningewith the king

king (indirect object)

Strong First Declension (Masculine) Plurals: Examples

Case Old EnglishTranslation

Nominative cyningas kings (subject)

Genitive cyninga of the kings

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Accusative cyningas kings (direct object)

Dative and Instrumental

cyningumwith the kings

kings (indirect object)

Strong Second Declension (Neuter)

We'll use "second declension" to label those nouns which end in consonants but whose plurals use "u" instead of "as." Some dictionaries will call these nouns "neuter."

Some Strong Second Declension(Neuter) Nouns:

Old English

Modern English

scip shipriht lawmægen powertungol star

The endings for these nouns are given in the table below.

(the dash - indicates that the stem gets no additional ending)

Strong Second Declension (Neuter) Nouns Paradigm

Case Singular PluralNominative - uGenitive es aAccusative - uDative and Instrumental e um

Note that the only real difference between the first declension (masculine) and second declension (neuter) ending occurs in the nominative and accusative plurals, which are u. The rest of the paradigm is the same for both first declensions and second declension nouns.

Strong Second Declension (Neuter) Singulars: Examples

Case Old English Translation

Nominative scip ship (subject)

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Genitive scipes of the ship

Accusative scip ship (direct object)

Dative/Instrumental scipewith the ship

(indirect object)

Strong Second Declension (Neuter) Plurals: Examples

CaseOld English

Translation

Nominative scipu animals (subject)

Genitive scipa of the ships

Accusative scipu ships (direct object)

Dative and Instrumental

scipumwith the ships

animals (indirect object)

Strong Third Declension(Feminine) Nouns

What we'll call "third declension" nouns, dictionaries may label as "feminine." They include the Old English words for "help," "need" and "gift."

Some Strong Third Declensions (Feminine) Nouns

Old English Modern Englishliornung learningþearf needrest restgeoc helpgiefu gift

The endings for these nouns are given in the table below

(the dash - indicates that the stem gets no additional ending)

Strong Third Declension (Feminine) Nouns Paradigm

Case Singular Plural

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Nominative - a or eGenitive e a or enaAccusative e a or eDative and Instrumental

e um

Yes, there really are two possibilities for the nominative, genitive and accusative plurals.

Strong Third Declension (Feminine) Singulars: Examples

Case Old English Translation

Nominative giefu gift (subject)

Genitive giefe of the gift

Accusative giefe gift (direct object)

Dative and Instrumental giefewith the gift

gift (indirect object)

Strong Third Declension (Feminine) Plurals: Examples

Case Old English Translation

Nominative giefa gifts (subject)

Genitive giefena of the gifts

Accusative giefa gifts (direct object)

Dative/Instrumental giefumwith the gifts

gifts (indirect object)

Weak Nouns

Fourth Declension ("weak") nouns are nouns whose stems end in a vowel (except for nouns that end in u, which are either third declension or minor declension). You do not need to be concerned about the gender of a fourth declension noun.

Some Fourth Declension (Weak) Nouns:

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Old English Modern Englishblostma flowerdraca dragoneage eyesceaða enemyhæte heat

The endings for these nouns are given in the table below

(the dash - indicates that the stem gets no additional ending)

Fourth Declension (Weak) Nouns Paradigm

Case Singular PluralNominative - anGenitive an enaAccusative an anDative and Instrumental

an um

Fourth Declension (Weak) Singular Nouns: Examples

CaseOld English

Translation

Nominative draca dragon (subject)

Genitive dracan of the dragon

Accusative dracan dragon (direct object)

Dative and Instrumental

dracan

with the dragon

dragon (indirect object)

Fourth Declension (Weak) Plural Nouns: Examples

CaseOld English

Translation

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Nominative dracan dragons (subject)

Genitive dracena of the dragons

Accusative dracan dragons (direct object)

Dative/Instrumental dracum

with the dragons

dragons (indirect object)

8. Adjectives

8.1. Quick Start

Surely the oddest grammatical feature belonging to the Germanic languages is that

they can inflect almost any adjective in either of two very different ways. If the

adjective follows ademonstrative pronoun, possessive adjective, or genitive noun

or noun phrase, one of the so-called “weak” endings is added to it; otherwise it is

given a “strong” ending.

In Old English it is difficult to discern a distinction in meaning between the strong

and weak adjectives, though there must originally have been one. But the distinction

is widespread (all the early Germanic languages have it) and surprisingly durable:

strong and weak adjectives were still distinguished in Chaucer’s English, and they are

distinguished even now in German.

At this point you may be grumbling that we have arbitrarily doubled the amount of

memorization required to learn the adjectives. If so, calm down: adjectives are really

quite easy. The weak adjectives are almost exactly the same as the weak nouns. Most

of the strong adjective endings resemble those of either the strong nouns or

the demonstrative pronouns. In this chapter you will see almost no endings that you

have not seen before.

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Indeed (though some Old English teachers may not approve of our telling you so),

you may find it possible to read Old English prose pretty well without having put in a

lot of work on adjectives. In a noun phrase like þæs æðelan bōceres ‘the noble

scholar’s’, you can get the information that the phrase is genitive singular from either

the demonstrative pronoun or the noun. The weak adjective æðelan doesn’t tell you

much. In a phrase like ġeonge prēostas ‘young priests’, the strong ending of the

adjective ġeonge is less ambiguous, but it is also redundant: you can get all the

information you need from the noun. It becomes important to recognize the

adjective’s ending when it gets separated from its noun:

hē lēt him þā of handon   lēofne flēogan

hafoc wið þæs holtes

[he then let his beloved hawk fly from his

hands towards the woods]   (The Battle of Maldon, ll. 7-8.)

Here hafoc hawk’ is the accusative direct object of lēt ‘let’. The

adjective lēofne ‘beloved’ is separated from this noun by the infinitive flēogan ‘fly’,

and so it is helpful that lēofne has the masculine accusative singular ending -ne so that

you can associate it correctly with its noun. You will run into this kind of situation

more often in poetry than in prose.

Table 8.1 summarizes the adjective endings.

Table 8.1. Adjective endings

 masculin

eneuter feminine

  Strong

singular nominative — — -u / —

accusative -ne — -e

genitive -es -es -re

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dative -um -um -re

instrumental -e -e  

plural

nominative-e -u / — / -e -a / -e

accusative

genitive -ra -ra -ra

dative -um -um -um

  Weak

singular

nominative -a -e -e

accusative -an -e -an

genitive -an -an -an

dative -an -an -an

plural

nominative-an -an -an

accusative

genitive -ra / -ena -ra / -ena -ra / -ena

dative -um -um -um

8.2. Strong adjectives

Table 8.2 shows the strong endings attached to an adjective with a long stem. (Forms

in bold type should be compared with the demonstrative pronouns, others with

the strong nouns.)

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Table 8.2. Strong adjectives (long stems)

  masculine neuter feminine

singula

r

nominative gōd ‘good’gōd

gōd

accusative gōdne gōde

genitive gōdesgōdre

dative gōdum

instrumental gōde  

plural

nominativegōde gōd, gōde gōda, -e

accusative

genitive gōdra

dative gōdum

The adjectives are subject to the same kinds of transformations that affect the nouns.

Those with long stems differ from those with short stems (table 8.3) in that the

feminine nominative singular and the neuter nominative/accusative plural end in -

u (see 6.1.1 for an explanation).

Table 8.3. Strong adjectives (short stems)

  masculine neuter feminine

singularnominative

hwæt ‘vigorous

’

hwæthwatu

accusative hwætne hwate

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genitive hwæteshwætre

dative hwatum

instrumental hwate  

plural

nominativehwate hwatu, -e hwata, -e

accusative

genitive hwatra

dative hwatum

Table 8.3 also shows that when the vowel of an adjective with a short stem is æ or ea,

it alternates with a, as has already been discussed in connection with nouns. In some

other adjectives, his dropped between voiced sounds, so, for example, the masculine

accusative singular of hēah ‘high’ is hēane and the feminine nominative singular

is hēa.

The masculine/neuter dative singular ending -um may cause confusion, for this is also

the ending of the dative plural nouns and adjectives, and you may already have come

to think of it as plural. Remember it this way: -um is always dative, and in nouns it is

always plural.

The second syllable of a two-syllable adjective, like that of a two-syllable noun, may be syncopated, so the dative plural of hāliġ ‘holy’ is hālgum but the masculine accusative singular is hāliġne.

The nominative and accusative plural ending -e is very frequent for both feminines and neuters in late Old English, when -e becomes the dominant ending for all genders. You will also see occasional -a in nominative and accusative plural neuters.

Possessive adjectives are always declined strong, and so is ōðer ‘other, second’, regardless of context.

8.3. Weak adjectives

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The weak adjectives (table 8.4) are almost exactly like the weak nouns. The

difference is that the ending of the genitive plural of a weak adjective is usually the

same as that of a strong adjective.

Table 8.4. Weak adjectives

  masculine neuter feminine

singular

nominative gōda ‘good’gōde

gōde

accusative gōdan gōdan

genitivegōdan

dative

plura

l

nominativegōdan

accusative

genitive gōdra, -ena

dative gōdum

There is no distinction between long and short stems, except that æ or ea in a short

root syllable always becomes a, so the weak masculine nominative singular

of hwæt ‘vigorous’ is hwata. Because all weak endings begin with vowels, h is always

dropped at the end of a root syllable (as with some nouns), so the weak

nominative/accusative plural of hēah ‘high’ is hēan. As withnouns and strong

adjectives, the second syllable of a two-syllable adjective can be syncopated, so the

weak nominative/accusative plural of hāliġ ‘holy’ is hālgan.

Comparative adjectives and ordinal numbers (except for ōðer ‘second’) are always

declined weak.

8.4. Comparison of adjectives16

The comparative adjective is made by adding -r- between the root syllable and the

inflectional ending, which is always weak regardless of context. The superlative is

made by adding -ost, which may be followed by either a weak or a strong inflection.

Examples:

heard ‘hard, fierce’ heardra heardostmilde ‘kind’ mildra mildosthāliġ ‘holy’ hāliġra hālgostsweotol ‘clear’ sweotolra sweotolost

Some adjectives have i-mutation in the comparative and superlative forms, and in

these cases the superlative element is usually -est. For example:

eald ‘old’ ieldra ieldestġeong ‘young’ ġinġra ġinġesthēah ‘high’ hīera hīehstlang ‘long’ lenġra lenġeststrang ‘strong’ strenġra strenġest

You may occasionally encounter unmutated forms, e.g. strangost ‘strongest’.

A few adjectives have anomalous comparative and superlative forms; these are still

anomalous in Modern English, though sometimes in different ways:

gōd ‘good’ betera betst  sēlra sēlestlȳtel ‘small’ lǣssa lǣstmiċel ‘large’ māra mǣstyfel ‘bad’ wiersa wierrest, wierst

Modern English has lost the alternative comparative and superlative sēlra ‘better’

and sēlest ‘best’.

Comparative adjectives sometimes cause problems for students who are not on the

lookout for them, or who confuse comparative -r- with the -r- of the feminine

genitive/dative singular ending -re or the genitive plural -ra. The Old English

comparative -r- may not look enough like the Modern English comparative -er to be

easy for you to detect. The only solution to the problem is to be alert when you read.17

8.5. The adjective in the noun phrase

Just as a pronoun can help you figure out the gender, case and number of a noun

phrase (§6.1.4), so can an adjective. This is particularly true of strong adjectives,

which have less ambiguous endings than weak ones. An extreme yet representative

example involves the nouns fæder ‘father’, which has no ending in any singular case

(§6.3.2), and sunu ‘son’, which has -a in both the genitive and dative (§6.3.1):

Ōðer is se hād ælmihtiġes fæder, ōðer is ælmihtiġes suna.

[One is the person of the almighty father, the other (that) of the almighty son.]

The adjective endings in -es tell us that both noun phrases, ælmihtiġes

fæder and ælmihtiġes suna, are genitive singular, even though the nouns are

ambiguous. The weak adjective, which is sometimes used without a pronoun in

poetry, can occasionally be useful in the same way:

Gomela Scylfing hrēas heoroblāc.

[The old Swede fell, battle-pale.]

(Beowulf, ll. 2487–8)

The weak ending -a marks the noun phrase Gomela Scylfing as nominative. It is more

common, of course, for the weak adjective to be preceded by a pronoun, and in such

cases the pronoun will be more help than the adjective:

Hwæt wite ġē be þām gōdan men?

[What do you know about that good man?]

The adjective gōdan and the noun menn could together be dative singular or

nominative/accusative plural; but the pronoun þām in the noun phrase þām gōdan

menn rules out everything but dative singular.

The examples given here and in §6.1.4 are very simple. A noun phrase can also

contain embedded clauses and prepositional phrases; but usually the nouns, pronouns

and adjectives will be most helpful in determining the function of the phrase in the

sentence.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY:

https://www.uni-due.de/SHE/HE_Grammar_OE-ME_nouns.htm

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Old_English/Adjectives

http://www.csun.edu/~sk36711/WWW/KAG/howto.html

http://www.jebbo.co.uk/learn-oe/nouns1.htm

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