Old English grammar

Old English grammar

OE as a synthetic language or inflected type of language

• Building grammatical forms:
• Grammatical ending
• Suppletive forms
• Interchanges in the root
• Grammatical prefixes

The parts of speech in OE

• Noun
• adjective
• verb
• Adverb
• Preposition
• Conjunction
• Interjection
• Pronoun

5 nominal grammatical categories

• Number
• Case
• Gender
• Degrees of comparison
• Category of definiteness/indefiniteness

Noun number and case

• Noun number and case
• Noun has 4 cases: Nominative, genitive, accusative, dative
• Adjective has 5 cases: Nominative, genitive, accusative, dative, instrumental

Personal pronouns have 2 person

• Personal pronouns have 2 person
• Other parts of speech 3p.: singular, plural and dual
• OE dual wit - NE pl. we

Verbal grammatical categories: tense, mood, person, number

• Verbal grammatical categories: tense, mood, person, number
• The distiction between the noun and the verb grammatical categories show the declension and conjugation

The noun

• Categories: case and number.
• The noun has three genders, but the distinction is not grammatical

Noun, cases

• Genitive case: subjective and objective case
• Subjective case: zrendel’s daeda –Grendel’s deeds
• Beowulf zeata – Beowulf of Geats
• Objective case is associated with possessive meaning: sum hund scipa – a hundred of ships

Dative was the chief case used with prepositions:

• Dative was the chief case used with prepositions:
• On morzenn – in the morning
• From paem – from the army
• The indirect personal object: Pa sende se cyninz to paem here and him cypan het - then sent the king to the army and ordered him to inform them
• The OE dative case also showed the instrumental case: hit hazolade stanum – it hailed with stones

Accusative case was a form that indicated a relationship to the verb:

• Accusative case was a form that indicated a relationship to the verb:
• Se wullf nimp and todalp pa skeap – the wolf takes and scatters the sheep

Morphological classification of nouns. Declension

• Declension: stem-suffix
• Gender of nouns
• Phonetic structure of words
• Phonetic changes in the last syllable

Stem-suffixes:

• Stem-suffixes:

a-stems

i-stems

N-stems

Ja-stems

Nd-stems

Zero suffixes

2. Stem suffixes also associated with three genders: masc., fem. and neutr.

Fem. pu: lenzpu, hyhpu (NE lenghth, height)

• Fem. pu: lenzpu, hyhpu (NE lenghth, height)
• Masc. ere: ficsere, boscere (NE fisher, learned man)
• A-stems included masc. and neutr.