Old English declension

Old English nouns were declined – that is, the ending of the noun changed to reflect its function in the sentence. There were five major cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and instrumental case.

*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 indicated the direct object of the sentence, 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, 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, for example "hringas þæm cyninge" means "rings for the king" or "rings to the king". There were also several verbs which took direct objects in the dative.
*The instrumental case indicated an instrument used to achieve something, for example "lifde sweorde", "he lived by the sword", where "sweorde" is the instrumental form of "sweord". During the Old English period, the instrumental was falling out of use, having largely merged with the dative. Only pronouns and strong adjectives retained separate forms for the instrumental.

The small body of evidence we have for Runic texts suggests there may also have a been a separate locative case in early or Northumbrian forms of the language (eg. ᚩᚾ ᚱᚩᛞᛁ [on rodi] "on the Cross"). [Page, "An Introduction to English Runes", Boydell 1999, p. 230]

Nouns take different endings depending on whether the noun was in the singular (for example, "hring" 'one ring') or plural (for example, "hringas" 'many rings').

Nouns are also categorised by grammatical gender – masculine, feminine, or neuter. Masculine and neuter words generally share their endings. Feminine words have their own subset of endings. The plural does not distinguish between genders.

Furthermore, Old English nouns are divided as either strong or weak. Weak nouns have their own endings. In general, weak nouns are easier than strong nouns, since they had begun to lose their declensional system. However, there is a great deal of overlap between the various classes of noun: they are not totally distinct from one another.

Nouns

trong nouns

Here are the strong declensional endings and examples for each gender:

Irregular strong nouns

In addition, masculine and neuter nouns whose main vowel is short 'æ' and end with a single consonant change the vowel to 'a' in the plural:

Nouns whose stem ends in -w change this to -u or drop it in the nominative singular. (Note that this '-u/–' distinction depends on syllable weight, as for strong nouns, above.)

Other such nouns include (with singular and plural nominative forms given):

Masculine: tōþ, tēþ 'tooth'; mann, menn 'man'; frēond, frīend 'friend'; fēond, fīend 'enemy' (cf. 'fiend')

Feminine: "studu", "styde" 'post' (cf. 'stud'); "hnitu", "hnite" 'nit'; "āc", "latinx|ǣc" 'oak'; "gāt", "latinx|gǣt" 'goat'; "brōc", "brēc" 'leg covering' (cf. 'breeches'); "gōs", "gēs" 'goose'; "burg", "byrg" 'city' (cf. German cities in -burg); "dung", "ding" 'prison' (cf. 'dungeon' by way of French and Frankish); "turf", "tyrf" 'turf'; "grūt", "latinx|grȳt" 'meal' (cf. 'grout'); "lūs", "latinx|lȳs" 'louse'; "mūs", "latinx|mȳs" 'mouse'; "neaht", "niht" 'night'Feminine with loss of -h in some forms: "furh", "fyrh" 'furrow' or 'fir'; "sulh", "sylh" 'plough'; "þrūh", "latinx|þrȳh" 'trough'; "wlōh", "wlēh" 'fringe'.Feminine with compression of endings: "cū", "latinx|cȳ" 'cow' (cf. dialectal plural 'kine')

Nouns of relationship

For the '-u/–' forms above, the distinction is the same as for strong nouns.

The following shows an example of an adjective ending with -h:

Modern English 'that' descends from the neuter nominative/accusative form, and 'the' from the masculine nominative form, with 's' replaced analogously by the 'th' of the other forms. The feminine nominative form was probably the source of Modern English 'she.'

ee also

* Old English morphology
* Old English pronouns

External links

* [http://faculty.virginia.edu/OldEnglish/courses/handouts/magic.html The Magic Sheet] , one page color PDF summarizing Old English declension