14. The oe noun system.

The categories:

1. gender: m, f, n;

2. number: sg, pl.

3. case: Nom, Dat, Gen, Acc.

1. Nom. c. can be defined as the case of active agent, it was the case of the subject. Mainly used with verbs denoting activity.

2. Gen. c. – case of nouns & pron. serving as an attribute to other nouns;

- meaning: possessive meaning, meaning of origin.

3. Dat. c. – used with prepositions (as an indirect personal object (to inform him)

- could convey an instrumental meaning (hailed with stones)

4. Acc. c. – indicate the passive object of a state

- relationship to a verb.

The main peculiarities of OE:

1. Nom and Acc were coinside;

2. Dat pl ended in ‘-um’;

3. Gen pl always had ‘-a’.

Strong declension: a, o, u, i-stems; the most numerous – a-stem masculine. This class served as a model for the whole OE noun system. It had plural endings –s or –as, the same as in Gen.c. singular.

Weak declension: n-stem. It reflexes the IE style: E.g.: имя – имена, время – времена, племя, стремя, etc.

Mostly had weak ending –en.

The root-steam nouns didn’t have word-building suffix, so the ending was added to the root. The traces are not numerous today, but they are very important and all of them underwent mutation of the root vowel (goose-geese)

The Dat sg forms in them reflects mutation in the root.

15. The simplification of the noun declension in English

Causes for Decay of Case System:

1. Influence of the Scandinavian Dialects that were grammatically simpler in comparison with OE Dialects and this influence led to the minimization of grammar.

2. Phonetic reduction of final unstressed syllables (inflections).

Consequences of Case System Decay:

1. The number of prepositions started to grow to help to replace the former Case forms.

2. Fixed word order appeared (The Subject almost always took the first place and was followed by the Object).

In ME the declensions disappeared due to the reduction of endings.

The gender had lost its inflections. In ME the masculine gender became the main. The Case system was contracted in ME due to the reduction of endings. As far as the Case endings were reduced to one or two, there remained no distinction between the Case forms and there was no necessity any more to distinguish 4 Cases:

The OE Nom, Acc, Dat cases fell together into Common case.

The Gen. c. used to denote possession → becomes possessive case.

In ME the plurals usually take –es which is the continuation of OE –as.

30. The main trends in word formation in history of English

I. Derivation

1) prefixation – was a productive way (unlike in

ModE):

a) IE prefixes (OE un- (negative));

b) Germanic prefixes (OE mis-, be-, ofer-(over-));

2. suffixation (the most productive mean):

1. –er;-or : writer

2. –ment: government

3. –al: mental

4. –ance, -ence: existence

5. –able: movable

6. –ic: metallic

II.Word-composition (highly productive)

1. noun+noun→ noun: (chairman)

2. gerund + noun→ noun: (looking glass)

3. adj+noun→ adj: (blackboard)

Some words originated from express-s: marry-go-round, mother-in-law

Shortening: exanination – exam, influenza – flue

Conversion: bomb – to bomb, a stop – to stop

Formation of common words from proper names: mackintosh,

Changing in the meaning of root: paper (газета)