The Old English noun Categories Nouns

The Old English noun. Categories.

Nouns are words which indicate a person, place, animal, thing, or idea, like “thing”, “animal”, “Samuel” and so on.

In Modern English almost all nouns are declined in pretty much the same way: we add ‑s to make plurals and ‑’s to make possessives. There are notable exceptions, however. The plural of ox is not oxes, but oxen, and the plural of child has the same ending, but preceded by ‑r-. And of course several very common nouns make plurals by changing their vowels: for example, tooth/teeth and mouse/mice. Our nouns with -s plurals, nouns with -en plurals, the noun with -r-, and the nouns that change their vowels belong to different declensions—classes of nouns that are declined in similar ways. Though we have just one major declension in Modern English and a few minor ones, in Old English there were several major declensions and several more minor ones.

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. NB. A useful rule of thumb is that nouns whose stems end with a consonant are strong, while nouns whose stems end with a vowel (except for "u") are weak.

The basic endings of the strong nouns neuter masculine feminine nominative — -u / — accusative — — -e genitive -es -e dative -e -as -u / — -a, -e genitive -a -a -a dative singular — -um -um nominative plural accusative Often one cannot tell the gender of a noun from its ending: strong masculine and neuter differ only in the nominative/accusative plural, and gender is never distinguished in the dative singular or in the genitive and dative plural. Further, one cannot always tell the case: nominative and accusative singular are not distinguished in masculine and neuter nouns, accusative, genitive and dative singular are not distinguished in feminine nouns, and nominative and accusative plural are never distinguished at all.

Strong masculines and neuters In the table below we can observe that the neuter nominative/accusative plural ending -u appears only after short syllables; neuters with long syllables have no ending. masculine nominative short neuter long neuter scip ‘ship’ þing ‘thing’ genitive stānes scipes þinges dative stāne scipe þinge stānas scipu þing genitive stāna scipa þinga dative singular stān ‘stone’ stānum scipum þingum accusative nominative plural accusative NB. The nominative/accusative singular of masculine and neuter nouns often ends in -e: ende ‘end’, wine ‘friend’, spere ‘spear’, etc. These forms look the same as the dative singular; do not be confused by the resemblance.

Strong feminines short stem nominative long stem sorg ‘sorrow’ ġiefe sorge ġiefa, -e sorga, -e genitive ġiefa sorga dative singular ġiefu ‘gift’ ġiefum sorgum accusative genitive dative nominative plural accusative Like the strong neuters, the strong feminines come in short and long varieties. The ending -u appears in the nominative singular after short syllables, but is dropped after long ones. Sometimes, however, the ending gets restored, for example, in lenġu ‘length’. Among the strong feminine nouns are a great many that represent abstract concepts, made from adjectives and other nouns. These include nouns ending in -þ such as strengþ ‘strength’ and hǣlþ ‘health’, those ending in -ness such as clǣnness ‘cleanness’ and ġīferness ‘greed’, and those ending in -ung such as leornung ‘learning’ and ġeōmrung ‘groaning’.

There a few examples of the weak declension, ancestor of the Modern English nouns with anomalous plural -en. masculine singular plural nominative accusative genitive dative nama ‘name’ naman neuter ēage ‘eye’ ēagan feminine tunge ‘tongue’ tungan naman ēagan tungan namena namum ēagena ēagum tungena tungum The only difference among the genders is that the masculine nominative singular ends in -a while the neuter and feminine end in -e. Most case endings are simply -an.

Athematic nouns The athematic nouns are those that sometimes have i-mutation of the root vowel instead of an ending. They are the ancestors of Modern English nouns like man/men and tooth/teeth. masculine short feminine long feminine hnutu ‘nut’ bōc ‘book’ hnyte bēċ menn hnyte bēċ genitive manna hnuta bōca dative mannum hnutum bōcum nominative singular accusative mann ‘man’ genitive mannes dative menn nominative plural accusative Several nouns that end in -nd, especially frēond ‘friend’, fēond ‘enemy’, are declined like the athematic nouns, though they are not, technically speaking, members of this declension. Several of these have partly or entirely gone over to the strong declension; for example, you are about as likely to encounter the plural frēondas as frīend.

Two-syllable nouns have syncopation (loss of a vowel) in the second syllable when the first syllable is long and an ending follows. masculine nominative neuter feminine hēafod ‘head’ genitive enġles hēafdes dative singular enġel ‘angel’ enġle hēafde enġlas hēafdu sāwla, -e genitive enġla hēafda sāwla dative enġlum hēafdum sāwlum accusative nominative plural accusative sāwol ‘soul’ sāwle

U-stem nouns This declension contains only masculines and feminines, and they are declined alike. There is, on the other hand, a distinction between short stems and long stems in the nominative singular, so table below illustrates one short stem and one long stem without regard to gender. short stem nominative singular sunu ‘son’ hand ‘hand’ suna handa genitive suna handa dative sunum handum accusative genitive dative nominative plural long stem accusative

Nouns of relationship The nouns of relationship that end in -r belong here: fæder ‘father’, mōdor ‘mother’, brōðor ‘brother’, sweostor ‘sister’, dohtor ‘daughter’. These have endingless genitive singulars and usually i-mutation in the dative singular masculine feminine nominative singular brōðor ‘brother’ dohtor ‘daughter’ brēðer dehter brōðor dohtor genitive brōðra dohtra dative brōðrum dohtrum accusative genitive dative nominative plural accusative