1. The first Germanic consonant shift. Grimm's Law. Verner's Law. The shift of stress

-a-stems

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

So, we can see that Old English nouns a-stems neuter with long vowel 1111 ghl give an unchanged plural, and the noun sheep being an exception Irom the general rule of formation of 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.

This group of nouns is of the same origin as that of Ukrainian nouns стіл, день, вікно, дно.

The Ukrainian (and Russian.) 2nd declension of nouns (masculine and neuter) originates from the same Indo-European group of nouns (Germanic short o proceeds from Indo-European a).

Examples of Old English a-stems are: masculine: earm (arm), eorl (earl), helm (helmet; protection), biscop (bishop), ham (home), heofon (heaven) etc.;

neuter: dor (door), hof (hoof), word (word), deor (wild animal), hus (house).

The nouns of this class were very numerous and were characterized by high frequency of use in Old English.

Nouns belonging to o-stems are all feminine. In the form of the nominative case monosyllabic nouns with a short root vowel of this class have ending –u (taly (tale)); if there are two and more syllables or the root vowel is long, there is no ending at all (for (journey)). Other nouns of this group are: caru (care), lufu (love), swefn (dream), scir (district) etc.

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. For.ex. hyllas (hill), speru (spear), cwene (woman);

Other nouns of this group are: masculine: mere(sea), mete(food) etc; neuter: sife(sieve), hilt(hilt); feminine: hyde(hide), woruld(world) etc.

In Ukrainian the sound i caused the palatalization of the previous consonant and was lost: тесть, гість.

Nouns belonging to -u-stems may be of masculine or feminine gender: sunu(son), duru(door).

Other nouns of this group are: Masculine: wudu(wood), medu(honey), feld(field) etc. Feminine:

nosu(nose), hand(hand) etc.