Практикум по истории языка (древнеанглийский период). Пятышина Т.Г - 15 стр.

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15
UNIT II. OLD ENGLISH MORPHOLOGY
The Noun
In representing the system of OE substantive morphology, two
approaches are possible. One is, to regard the Old English 1anguage as
a stage in the historical development of Germanic languages. This is the
traditional approach.
The other point of view takes the OE substantive forms as such purely
synchronically and classifies them according to the facts, immediately visible
in the OE texts. This modern point of view is to be found in An Old
English Grammar by R. Quirk and C. L. Wren, London, 1955 [11].
According to the traditional view point, linguists distinguish "in the
first place, between strong declension and weak declension of
substantives" [4, 64]. The strong declension includes nouns (or
substantives) with vocalic stems /-a, -ō, -i, -u / and the weak declension
comprises n-stems only. There are some minor types, as root-stems and
r-stems. The OE Noun was characterized by its inflexions.
Three grammatical categories are represented in the Old English
substantives, just like in many other Germanic and I-E languages:
gender, number and case.
The gender of OE nouns was grammatical, i.e. in keeping with their
language. Although most nouns naming male beings were masculine.
E.g. mann "man", sunu "son", cyning "king", and most nouns, denoting
female beings, were feminine. E.g. modor "mother", dōhtor "daughter",
cwēn "woman", but there were many exceptions such as wīf "woman"
and mǣgden "maiden" – neuter, wīfman "woman" – mascu1ine.
Moreover, numerous things of abstract notions were not neuter as they are
today, but masculine or feminine, e.g. Nm-fōt "foot", nāma "name", stān
"stone", and Nf. – sunne "sun", tunge "tongue", wynn "joy".
They are the first signs of the decline of grammatical gender.
In OE, as well as in ModE, the noun had two numbers: singular and
plural, e.g. stān "stone" stānas "stones".
OE noun had four cases: nominative (Nom.), genitive (Gen.),
dative (Dat.) and accusative (Acc.). The Nom.S. and the Acc.S. of Nn.
often coincided, and so did sometimes the Nm. and the Acc. of Nm. and
Nf. They always coincided in the Plural of all nouns (Nm., Nf., and Nn.).

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