Declension of oe nouns man(n) and fot

case	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Nom.	man (n)	men (n)	fot	fet
Gen.	mannes	manna	fot	fota
Dat.	men (n)	mannum	fet	fotum
Acc.	man (n)	men (n)	fot	fet

Thus, the irregular plural forms of modern English nouns based on the root vowel interchange can be traced from OE system of declension.

The Adjective. The adjective was a changeable part of speech in OE, i.e. it had all the categories of the noun and agreed with the noun it modified in number, gender, and case. Every adjective had two different types of declen­sion: strong and weak. The choice of declension depended on whether the noun modified by the adjective referred to something thought of as indefi­nite (strong declension) or definite (weak declension), e.g.

Hē is Зōd man (He is a good man) :: sē Зōda man (this good man).

The OE adjective also had degrees of comparison but only the synthetic and the suppletive forms, e.g.

Wīd “wide” – wīdra – wīdost,

Зlœd “glad” – Зlœdra – glœdost,

Зōd “good” – betera – betst,

Yfel “bad” – wiersa – wierst.

The Pronoun. OE pronouns were represented by the following semantic groups: personal, reflexive, demonstrative, interrogative, relative, negative, and indefinite. Personal pronouns had three numbers (the Singular, the Plural und the Dual), four cases (the Nominative, the Genitive, the Dative, the Accusative), and three genders (the third person singular pronouns only). Here is a list of the OE forms of personal pronouns (given in the Nominative Case):

1^stpers. 2^ndpers. 3^rdpers. Sing. ic pū hē (m), hēo (f), hit (n)

Pl. Wē Зē hīe, hī, hŷ, hēo

Dual wit Зit

The demonstrative pronouns had a fifth case - instrumental, and also had forms for singular/plural and forms indicating the category of gender, e.g.

Sē (m), Pœt (n), sēo/sīo (f)_, Pa (pl.) (-that, those) Pēs (m), Pis (n), Pēos (f), Pās (pl.) (=this_t these).

There were no possessive pronouns in OE. In the function of possessive pronouns the forms of the Genitive case of personal pronouns was used, e.g. Mid mīnum frēondum ("with my friends ").

The Verb. OE verbs had the following categories: of tense (only the present and the past), of mood (indicative, imperative and subjunctive), of person, and of number. The main forms of the verb were the following: the Infinitive - the Past Singular - the Past Plural - Past Participle. Till today only the verb BE has retained these forms (be - was - were - been).

There was no category of voice.

All verbs were divided into two groups: strong (with gradation) and weak. The latter formed their past tense with the help of dental suffixes -de (-te) and -d (-t). OE verbs were conjugated in the present as well as in the past tense having the same form for all persons in plural. Below are given conjugative terminations of Old English strong and weak verbs:

Table 2