2. The oe Noun

OE noun has 2 grammatical categories: number and case. Nouns also distinguished three forms of gender: masculine, feminine and neuter.

Abstract nouns with suffix –þu were feminine:

e.g. OE lenZru (length)

hyhþu (height)

Nouns with suffix –ere were masculine:

OE fiscere (fisher)

bocere (learned man)

OE wif (wife) was of neuter gender

mxgden (maiden) was of neuter gender

OE wifman (woman) – masculine gender

The category of number consisted of two members: singular and plural.

singular, masculine sunu plural – suna

singular, feminine hand plural – handa

The category of case had 4 members: Nominative, Genetive, Dative and Accusative.

System of Declension

OE system of declension was based on a number of distinctions:

• the stem – suffix

• the gender of nouns

• the phonetic structure of the word

• phonetic changes in the final syllables.

The stem-suffixes could consist of vowels (a-stems i-stems), of consonants (n-stems), of sound sequences (-ja-stems, -nd-stems). Some groups of nouns had no stem-forming suffix. They were called root-stems.

The examples of declensional paradigms

	a-stem		u-stem Feminine	n-stem Masculine
	Masculine Neuter
Singular nom acc gen dat	stan stan stanes stane	scip scip scipes scipe	Ziefu Ziefe Ziefe Ziefe Ziefe	nama naman naman naman naman
Plural nom/acc gen dat	stanas stana stanum	scipu scipa scipum	Ziefa Ziefa Ziefum	naman namena namum

The traces of a-stem declension in Modern English:

1. ’s (possessive case) goes back to the genitive case singular of masculine and neuter gender;

2. –s (plural of nouns) goes back to nominative and accusative case plural of masculine gender nouns;

3. Uninflected forms of plural in Modern E (like “sheep”, “deer”) come from the nouns of neuter gender of the long syllabus type.

3. The oe Pronoun

There were the following classes of pronouns in OE: personal

demonstrative

interrogative

indefinite

The grammatic categories were either similar to the categories of the nouns (in pronouns-nouns) or to the adjectives (adjective pronouns)

Relative, possessive and reflexive were not yet fully developed in OE.

The Personal Pronouns

The Personal Pronouns had three persons, three numbers, three genders in the third person.

The first and the second-person personal pronouns declined through the four case system in singular and plural.

First person
Case	Singular	Dual	Plural
Nom. Gen Dat. Acc.	ic min me mec, me	wit uncer unc uncit	we ure, user us usic,us
Second person
Nom. Gen Dat. Acc.	þu þin þe þec, þe	Zit incer inc incit, inc	Ze eower eow eowic, eow

The third-person personal pronouns had three genders, four cases, singular and plural.

	Singular			Plural
	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	All genders
nom acc gen dat	he hine his him	heo hie hire hire	hit hit his him	hie hi hiera him

The oblique cases of personal pronouns + adjective –self could serve as reflexive pronouns.