The history of the language lecture 3 Morphology

There are two numbers - singular and plural, and four cases - nominative, genitive, dative and accusative. Comparing with what we have now we can see that number proved to be a stable category. Case is supplanted by other means to express the relations between the words in an utterance, whereas gender disappeared altogether. In traditional historical studies the nouns are divided into classes according to the former stem-forming suffixes, which were hardly visible even in Gothic, the language separated in time from the Old English by centuries.

Without knowing the original structure of the nouns in the language we can hardly explain the exceptions in the formations of plural of the present-day English nouns. Why goose -pl. geese, but moose -pl. moose, foot - feet but boot — boots, sheep — pl. sheep, but sheet – sheet. The nouns in Old English are commonly classified as belonging to strong and weak declension, within each of these groups there are several subgroups.

The Strong Declension includes nouns that had had a vocalic 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.

The Strong Declension includes nouns that had had a vocalic 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.

-a-stems

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

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.

Examples of Old English а-stems are: masculine: earrn (arm), eorl (earl), , biscop (bishop), heofon (heaven) etc.

Examples of Old English а-stems are: masculine: earrn (arm), eorl (earl), , biscop (bishop), heofon (heaven) etc.