Indirect Influence[edit]
It is not always easy to tell at what point a word entered English, or in what form. Some words have come into English from Latin more than once, through French or another Romance language at one time and directly from Latin at another. Thus we have pairs like fragile/frail, army/armada, corona/crown, ratio/reason, and rotund/round. The first word in each pair came directly from Latin, while the second entered English from French (or Spanish, in the case of armada). In addition, some words have entered English twice from French, with the result that they have the same source, but different pronunciations reflecting changing pronunciation in French, for example chief/chef (the former a Middle English borrowing and the latter modern). Multiple borrowings explain other word pairs and groups with similar roots but different meanings and/or pronunciations: canal/channel, poor/pauper, coy/quiet, disc/disk/dish/desk/dais/discus.[5]
Opposition[edit]
Linguistic purism in the English language is the belief that words of native origin should be used instead of foreign-derived ones (which are mainly Romantic, Latin and Greek). "Native" can mean "Anglo-Saxon" or it can be widened to include all Germanic words. In its mild form, it merely means using existing native words instead of foreign-derived ones (such as using begin instead of commence). In its more extreme form, it involves reviving native words that are no longer widely used (such as ettle for intend) and/or coining new words from Germanic roots (such as word stock for vocabulary). This dates at least to the inkhorn term debate of the 16th and 17th century, where some authors rejected the foreign influence, and has continued to this day, being most prominent in Plain English advocacy to avoid Latinate terms if a simple native alternative exists.
West Germanic and Latin infuence from the Roman Empire
After the aboriginal contact, the Germanic tribes speaking one language spread out across northern and Central Europe. By 500BC three major dialectal divisions had appeared in Germanic: East (the Goths), North (the Scandinavians), and West (ancestors of the English, Germans and Dutch). The Germanic languages today show many signs of being closely related: English: sing, sang, sung; Dutch: zingen, zong, gezongen; Swedish: sjunga, sjo:ng, sjungit.
Due to the influence of the Roman Empire the Western dialect of Germanic which later gave rise to English, Dutch, and German borrowed a large number of Latin words in the first few centuries AD. This was the first phase of Latin borrowings. These borrowings tended to fall into certain semantic categories.
a) Words for many Mediterranean foodstuffs: oleum, butirum, olive, caseus (cheese/kase-- replacing the Germanic yustas/ost), piper, kitchen from coquina, panna>pan, cuppa>cup, discas>dish, kaula for cabbage (cf. cauliflower, kohlrabi, coleslaw); petrosileum>parsely.
The Germanic tribes also coined some new terms at this time: ale, beer--grain allowed to sprout into malt and fermented with ground barely. hence: hallucination. Tacitus reports that the Germans drank it with abandon.
b) Timekeeping words: yarum, mannoth, langtinus (Lent). Originally, the Germanic peoples had no names for the days of week, so Roman names were translated into Germanic to produce the following calques, or loan translations: sun-day, lun/moon-day, mars/tiwaz-day, mercury/Odin, Woden-day, Zeus/Thor-day, Venus/Friga-day, Saturnday (no German equivalent to the God Saturn) Some original Germanic time words were retained: sumaz, wintraz.
There were many other borrowings from Latin at this time, especially of words denoting more abstract concepts: paternal, from Latin pater father. Latin cognates borrowed into Germanic during the 1st-5th centuries AD led to the creation of many lexical doublets that attest to the divergence of Latin and Germanic from a common ancestor--Indo-European. A lexical doublet can be defined as two words from a common source which reach a language at different times or through different intermediate languages (a cognate that is actually borrowed into a language). A good example is the Germanic three and the Latin prefix tri-, which both originate from the ancient IE word for three, thought to have sounded something like tree. Three is native Germanic; tri- is a later borrowing from Latin.
The reason for the phonetic differences in such lexical doublets is this: In the history of the development of IE into several daughter languages, several major phonetic changes occurring in Germanic which did not occur in Latin (these are called Grimm's Law). The effects of these changes can clearly be seen when examining lexical doublets involving Latin borrowings, which do not show the changes, and original Germanic versions of the same historic root, which do show the changes.
a) Indo-European contained the voiceless unaspirated stops [t], [p], [k]. These became fricatives in Germanic but not Latin, thus: p--f father/paternal, t--th three/triple, k--h horn/cornucopia, the original non-aspirated [p, t, k] in Germanic remained only after [s], so both Germanic and Latin words in English contain the consonant clusters [sp, sk, st]: spill/ spoil, star/stellar, asteroid, scab/scabies. All of these pairs are examples of lexical doublets in modern English.
b) Voiced stops became voiceless aspirated stops in Germanic but not in Latin: b--p peg/bacillus d--t ten/decimal, rat/rodent, tooth/dentist, g--k corn/grain. This change once again added [p, t, k] to Germanic, but this time the sounds were aspirated. This change occured later than the loss of original, unaspirated [p,t,k].
And so, by way of summary of the pre-English period, we can note the following events: A great deal of contact between West Germanic tribes and the Roman Empire led to many borrowings from Latin. Since Latin belongs to another branch of IE, these borrowings often formed lexical doublets alongside native Germanic versions of the same IE words.
French . The Norman invasion of England in 1066 had a major impact not only on the country, but also on the English language. William the Conqueror and his merry band of Normans brought with them Norman French, which became the language of the court, government and the upper class for the next three centuries. English continued to be used by ordinary people, and Latin was the language of the church.
During the period when Norman French was the dominant language, English was rarely used in writing, and started to change in many ways. Before the conquest English had a much more complex grammar, however 70 or 80 years later, the grammar had become much simpler. This change is known as the transformation from Old English to Middle English. At the same time Norman French became Anglo-Norman as it was itself affected by English.
More than 10,000 French words found their way into English – words associated with government, law, art, literature, food, and many other aspects of life. About three quarters of these words are still used, and words derived directly or indirectly from French now account for more than a third of English vocabulary. In fact English speakers know around 15,000 French words, even before they start learning the language.
Quite a lot of the words of French origin used in English sit alongside native English ones, and in some cases there are words of Latin and/or Greek origin with similar meanings. Beef (from French boeuf) is meat from a cow (from Old English cu), a type of bovine (from Latin bovinus via French bovin). A king (from Old English cyning) can be kingly, royal (from French roial) and regal (from Latin regalis).
In some cases words with the same or similar meanings were borrowed from both Norman French and Parisian French at different times. For example warden comes from Norman French, while guardian comes from Parisian French.
The pronunciation of English changed to some extent under the influence of French, as did the spelling. For example, the Old English spellings cw, sc and c became qu, sh and ch, so we now write queen rather than cwen, ship rather than scip, and should rather than scolde.
English grammar did take on a few French structures, such as putting in adjectives after nouns in some expressions – attorney general, secretary general, surgeon general.
Vocabulary During the Norman occupation, about 10,000 French words were adopted into English, some three-fourths of which are still in use today.
This French vocabulary is found in every domain, from government and law to art and literature - learn some. More than a third of all English words are derived directly or indirectly from French, and it's estimated that English speakers who have never studied French already know 15,000 French words.
Pronunciation English pronunciation owes a lot to French as well. Whereas Old English had the unvoiced fricative sounds [f], [s], [θ] (as in thin), and [∫] (shin), French influence helped to distinguish their voiced counterparts [v], [z], [ð] (the), and [ʒ] (mirage), and also contributed the diphthong [ɔy] (boy). (3) (What is voiced/unvoiced/fricative?) Grammar Another rare but interesting remnant of French influence is in the word order of expressions like secretary general and surgeon general, where English has retained the noun + adjective word order typical in French, rather than the usual adjective + noun used in English.
Grammatical categories of the English verb: growth of the perfect forms in English language.
The perfect forms have developed from OE verb phrases. The main source of the perf. form was the OE “possessive” construction, consisting of the verb habban (NE have), a direct object and Part.II of a transitive verb, which served as an attribute to the object. The Part. agreed with the noun-object in numver, gender, case. Originally the verb habban was used only with Participles of transitive verbs; than it came to be used with verbs taking genitival, datival and prepositional objects and even with intransitive verbs, which shows that it was developing into a kind of auxiliary. Towards ME the two verb phrases turned into analytical forms and made up a single set of forms termed “perfect”. The Participles had lost their forms of agreement with the noun. The Part. usually stood close to the verb have and was followed by the object which referred now to the analytical form as a whole – instead of being governed by have. In the perf.form from the auxiliary have had lost the meaning of possession and was used with all kinds of verbs, without restrictions. By the age of the Literary Renaissance the perf.forms had spread to all the parts of the verb system, so that ultimately the category of time correlation became the most universal of verbal categories.
Grammatical categories of the English verb: growth ofthe continuous forms in English language.
The development of aspect is linked up with the growth of the continuous forms. In the OE verb system there was no category of aspect; verbal prefixes especially зe-, which could express an aspective meaning of perfectivity in the opinion of most scholars, were primarily word-building prefixes. The growth of continuous forms was slow and uneven. Verb phrases consisting of bēon (NE be) + Part.I are not infrequently found in OE prose. They denoted a quality, or a lasting state, characterizing the person or thing indicated by the subject of the sentence. In early ME ben + Part.I fell into disuse; it occurs occasionally in some dialectal areas. In the 15th and 16th c. be + Part.I was often confused with a synonymous phrase – be + the preposition on + a verbal noun. It was not until the 18th c. that the cont. forms acquired a specific meaning of their own; to use modern definitions, that of incomplete concrete process of limited duration. Only at the stage the cont. and non-cont. made up a new gram. category – aspect.
OE Verb. Grammatical categories and morphologiacal classification.
In Finite Forms they were: mood (3), tense (2), number (2), person(3).
1) There were 3 moods: Ind, Subj, Imp. They had approximately the same meanings which they have today with the exception of the Subj Mood, which was frequently used to express a problematic action and was found in indirect speech. It was much more often than in the Present.
2) The OE verbs had 2 tenses: the Present and the Past. The present form was used to denote both tenses present and future (..to denote Pr and Future actions as in other Germanic langeages). There were no analytical forms, only inflexion. Futurity was shown lexically with the help of adverbial modifiers and the context. It is true that in OE there were combinations with the verbs: sculan (shall), willan (will), but they had there own lexical meaning. They were not auxiliary verbs. From these constructions the future forms (the future tense was) were formed later.
3) The category of person was represented only in the Indicative sg and in the Imperative in OE. There was no indication of person in the Ind pl or in the Subj forms. (One form for all persons.) Three persons were distinguished only in the present tense of the Ind Mood.
4) The Ind and Subj had 2 numbers in both tenses. The Imp Mood also distinguished 2 numbers. No dual number. At that time they were ?homonymous? forms. In the Subj M the past and the present pl were the same and also in the sg present and past. In the Indicative they were homonymous forms in the sing and plural. Lōcian (look) wv2 (weak verb class 2).
Tense Only two tenses are distinguished by inflexion, present and past (sometimes called preterite in the grammars); both cover a wider range of meanings than they would in Modern English. So he cymeth (present tense) could mean ‘he comes', ‘he is coming', or ‘he will come'; he com (past tense) could mean ‘he came', ‘he has come', ‘he was coming', or ‘he had come'. However, the periphrastic tense-forms (i.e. forms with ‘have', ‘will', ‘be', etc., plus infinitive or participle) illustrated in the translations here are already beginning to develop in Old English.
Mood
OE
verbs, like MnE verbs, have three moods,
indicative (for
statements and questions),
imperative
(for
commands), and subjunctive
(for
wishes, hypothetical conditions, etc.). The main point of difference
here is that in MnE we use the subjunctive mood much less frequently,
and have few distinctive subjunctive forms (see your Traditional
Grammar
booklet, 2.6.iii) c), and Mitchell & Robinson, Index of Subjects,
under "Moods"); OE regularly indicates the subjunctive by
inflexion, and you should learn to recognise subjunctive forms.
Strong and weak verbs
As in MnE, verbs may be ‘strong' (forming their past tense by vowel-change) or ‘weak' (forming their past tense by adding -d-); but in OE, the proportion of strong verbs is higher. You should concentrate particularly on the endings of these forms.
II. Verbal Paradigms: As in every other Gmc. language, the Old English verbal system had two principle divisions: the strong verbs (whose past-tense forms were formed via vowel gradation) and the weak verbs (whose past-tense forms were built by means of a suffix). In the Old English verbal system, moreover, there are only two tenses: past and non-past (i.e. present and future), there was no inflected passive voice (except the past passive hatte 'was called' < h'tan), three moods (indicative, imperative, and subjunctive. Verbs are inflected for person (1st, 2nd, 3rd) and number (singular and plural) in addition to tense. Dual subjects are treated as plurals. There are two participles, a present and a past.
4."Weak" Verb classes: In contrast to the strong verbs and their ablaut, the weak verbs are primarily identified by the fact that they form the past tense by means of a suffix. The weak verbs, however, are further divided into three classes, depending on the relation ship between the infinitive and the past tense forms. In Wk. Class I, the infinitive ends in either -an or -ian, and always has an umlauted stem vowel, and the preterite suffix is either -ed- or -d-. Wk. Class II verbs, on the other hand, have infinitives which always end in -ian, but do not have umlauted stem vowels, and the preterite suffix is always -od-. The third class of weak verbs contains only four verbs: habban 'to have', libban 'to live', secgan 'to say', and hycgan 'to think'.
5. The verb 'to be' in Old English. Among all the anomolous verbs in OE, the most necessary, and most anomolous is 'to be', owing to the fact that it reflects three different PIE roots: *es- 'to be', *bh+- 'to become', and *wes- 'to remain, dwell'. The forms from *es- and the forms from *bh+- are distinguished from one another in that the b- forms can have a sense of futurity to them.
Strong verbs
Verbs are known as "strong" which form their preterite tenses by means of a change in the stem-vowel, i.e. by "ablaut". Many of these changes still exist in modern English, reflected in verbs such as sing (past tense sang, past participle sung).
There are seven classes of strong verb in Old English, denoted on Wiktionary with Roman numerals. Each class has a different ablaut-series (though confusingly, there are three types of Class III).
Class I
ī ‧ ā ‧ i ‧ i eg scīnan, 1st pret scān, pret pl scinon, past ppl scinen
Class II
ēo ‧ ēa ‧ u ‧ o eg ċēosan, 1st pret ċēas, pret pl curon, past ppl coren
Class III
IIIa: i ‧ a ‧ u ‧ u eg bindan, 1st pret band, pret pl bundon, past ppl bunden
IIIb: e/eo ‧ ea ‧ u ‧ o eg helpan, 1st pret healp, pret pl hulpon, past ppl holpen
IIIc: e ‧ æ ‧ u ‧ o eg bregdan, 1st pret brægd, pret pl brugdon, past ppl brogden
Class IV
e ‧ æ ‧ ǣ ‧ o eg beran, 1st pret bær, pret pl bǣron, past ppl boren
Class V
e ‧ æ ‧ ǣ ‧ e eg cweþan, 1st pret cwæþ, pret pl cwǣdon, past ppl cweden
Class VI
a ‧ ō ‧ ō ‧ a eg standan, 1st pret stōd, pret pl stōdon, past ppl standen
Class VII
ea ‧ ēo ‧ ēo ‧ ea eg healdan, 1st pret hēold, pret pl hēoldon, past ppl healden
Weak verbs
Weak verbs are more predictable. They form their preterite tense by adding -de in the singular and -don in the plural. This is the root of the common English past-tense suffix -ed. Weak verbs are often formed from nouns, or are in general "newer" words.
There are three classes of weak verb, denoted on Wiktionary with Arabic numerals.
Class 1 are weak verbs have an infinitive ending in -an or -rian. Third-person singular present ends in -eþ, and present plural ends in -aþ.
Class 2 are weak verbs have an infinitive ending in -ian (except -rian, above). Their third-person present singular ending is -aþ, like Class 1 plurals. Class 2 present plurals end in -iaþ.
Class 3 are weak verbs are more unpredictable, and often combine features of the first two weak classes. There are four Class 3 verbs: habban, libban, secgan and hycgan.
OE Strong verbs
The majority of OE verbs fell into two great divisions: the strong verbs and the weak verbs. Besides these two main groups there were a few verbs which could be put together as “minor” groups. The main difference between the strong and weak verbs lay in the means of forming the principal parts, or “stems” of the verb. The strong verbs formed their stems by means of ablaut and by adding certain suffixes; in some verbs ablaut was accompanied by consonant interchanges. The strong verbs had four stems, as they distinguished two stems in the Past Tense – one for the 1st and 3rd p. sg Ind. Mood, the other – for the other Past tense forms, Ind. and Subj. the weak verbs derived their Past tense stem and the stem of Participle II from the Present tense stem with the help of the dental suffix -d- or -t-; normally they did not interchange their root vowel, but in some verbs suffixation was accompanied by a vowel interchange. Minor groups of verbs differed from the weak and strong verbs. Some of them combined certain features of the strong and weak verbs in a peculiar way (“preterite-present” verbs); others were suppletive or altogether anomalous.
Strong Verbs The strong verbs in OE are usually divided into seven classes. Classes from 1 to 6 use vowel gradation which goes back to the IE ablaut-series modified in different phonetic conditions in accordance with PG and Early OE sound changes. Class 7 includes reduplicating verbs, which originally built their past forms by means of repeating the root-morpheme; this doubled root gave rise to a specific kind of root-vowel interchange. The principal forms of all the strong verbs have the same endings irrespective of class: -an for the Infinitive, no ending in the Past sg stem, -on in the form of Past pl, -en for Participle II.
Strong verb indicate tense by a change in the quality of a vowel. They are original(germ. Europ). Restrictive group of verb. Oe – over 300Sv. 1 class –i class, a. 2 class-u-classu+root=diphthong,. Root consonant changed(rotasism). 3,4 class- the gradation was caused by consonant.(breaking), 6- qualitative-quantities ablaut 7 class –reduplication of the root-morpheme. They use form of conjugation known as ablaut. And this form of conjugation the stem of the word change to indicate the tense.
The origin of Modern English irregural verbs.
Strong Verbs and their Development
As far as the strong verbs were a non-productive class, some strong verbs turned into weak with time, i.e. started to employ -t/-d suffix in their form-building (e.g. to climb, to help, to swallow, to wash, etc.). Thus in NE only 70 strong verbs out of 300 in OE remained.
The strong verbs were subdivided into 7 classes according to the type of vowel gradation/ablaut.
The classes that survived best through different periods of the history were classes 1, 3, 6:
Class 1 |
Infinitive |
Past Sg |
Past Pl |
Participle 2 |
|||||
OE |
wrītan |
wrāt |
writon |
writen |
|||||
ME |
writen |
wrot |
writen |
writen |
|||||
NE |
write |
wrote |
written |
||||||
Class 3 |
Infinitive |
Past Sg |
Past Pl |
Participle 2 |
|||||
OE |
findan |
fand |
fundon |
funden |
|||||
ME |
finden |
fand |
founden |
founden |
|||||
NE |
find |
found |
found |
||||||
Class 6 |
Infinitive |
Past Sg |
Past Pl |
Participle 2 |
|||||
OE |
scacan |
scoc |
scōcon |
scacen |
|||||
ME |
shaken |
shook |
shoken |
shaken |
|||||
NE |
shake |
shook |
shaken |
||||||
Analysing the tables above, we can see that the following changes occurred:
In ME the inflections -an, -on, -en were all reduced to just one inflection -en.
In NE the ending -n was lost in the Infinitive and preserved in the Participle 2 in order to distinguish these two forms.
In NE Past Singular and Past Plural forms were unified, usually with the Singular form preferred as a unified form because Past Plural and Participle 2 often had similar forms and it was hard to distinguish them (e.g. ME writen (Past Pl) – writen (Part. 2)) the category of Number disappeared in the Verb.
In ModE the subdivision into classes was lost though we still can trace some peculiarities of this or that class in the forms of the irregular verbs.
Weak verbs
Weak verbs are relatively stronger than strong verbs. They reflect a later stage in the development of the Germ.languages. There were an open class in OE as new verbs that entered the language generally formed their forms on analogie with the weak verbs. Whereas, the strong verbs used vowel interchange as means of differentiation among the principal verb tense, the weak verbs used for that purpose suffixation(suffixes –t,-d) : cēpan, cepte, cept. The weak verbs had a stem-forming suffix, that followed the root & the grammatical endings. In accordance of the character of the stem-suffix the weak verbs are classified into 3 classes:
The stem suffix “i”, the class includes many words from other nouns, adjectives and verbs. All of them have a front- root vowel – the result of the palatal mutation due to the “i” element of the stem suffix.( dōn-deman; ful-fyllan). In the cause of time this palatal suffix was lost. It was preserved only in some participles in the form of “e”: dēman, demd, demed.
The stem-suffix “oi”.The “o” element of the suffix is preserved in the past tense & in the Participle II. The root vowel of this class remained unchanged because of the preceding ō (lufo-ian) in all forms.
Only 3 verbs: -habban –have;-libban-live; seezan-say.
Minor groups of verbs in OE.
Among them the most important group:
1)Preterite – present verbs.
Originally the Present Tense forms of these verbs were Past tense forms. Later these forms acquired a present meaning but preserved many formal features of the Past tense. Most of these verbs had new Past tense forms built with the help of the dental suffix. Some of them also acquired the forms of the verbals: Participles and infinitives. Most verbs didn’t have a full paradigm and were in this sense “defective”.
The verbs were inflected in the Present like the Past tense of strong verbs: the forms of the 1st and 3rd person sing. Unlike strong verbs had the same root-vowel in all the persons; the plural had a different grade of ablaut similarly with strong verbs. In the Past the preterite-presents were inflected like weak verbs: the dentak suffix + the endings –e, -est,-e. In OE there were 12 preterite-present verbs. 6 of them have survived in modern E. (cunnun, sceal, mazan:ought, may, must). Most of the Preterite-presents did not indicate actions, but expressed a kind of attitude to an action, denoted by another verb-an infinitive which followed the preterit-present. They were used like modal verbs and eventually developed into modern modal verbs.
Among the verbs of the minor groups:
-anomalous verbs with irregular forms(willan – the meaning of volition and desire, indicated an attitude to an action and was often followed by an infinitive.
2 )OE verbs were suppletive (OE zān, bēon=be)
2. The evolution of the grammatical categories of the Noun. The importance of the a-stem,n-stem,root stem declensions in Modern English. Explain the grammatical form from historical point of view.
OLD ENGLISH NOUNS. Grammatical categories are usually subdivided into nominal categories, found in nominal parts of speech (Noun, Pronoun, Adjective, numerals) and verbal categories found chiefly in the finite verb.There were 5 nominal grammatical categories in Old English: number, case, gender, degrees of comparison and the category of definiteness/indefiniteness.
The noun had only 2 grammatical categories proper. They are inflected for number and case. In addition nouns distinguished 3 genders.
It’s interesting to know that sometimes male beings need not necessarily be denoted by nouns of the masculine gender. The same applies to nouns denoting female beings.
Old English word wĪf is Neuter and wĪfman is Masculine.
Sometimes a word could be in two genders
In late Old English the gender of nouns tended to adjust in most cases: for example, wĪfman began to be treaded as Feminine instead of Masculine.
The category of number consisted of 2 members: singular and plural, which were well distinguished in all declensions with very few homonymous forms.
The noun had 4 cases (Nominative, Genitive, Dative and Accusative).
The Nominative case is the case of an active agent.
Nouns in the Genitive case served as attributes to other nouns.
Dative could convey an instrumental meaning, indicated the means and manner of the action.
The Accusative case was used with nouns as direct object denoting the recipient of an action
The most remarkable feature of Old English nouns was their elaborate system of declensions, which is a sortal morphological classification. The total number of declension exceeded 25.
There were two respective principal groups of declensions in Old English: the vowel declension (“strong” declension) and consonant declension (“weak” declension). The vowel declension comprises 4 main paradigms a-stem, ō-stem, u-stem and i-stem.
The consonant declension comprises nouns with the stem originally ending in –n, -r, -s. The majority of the nouns of consonant declension ended in –n, that’s why it is sometimes called n-declension. And besides by the end of Old English period r, s-stems were declined by analogy of a-stems. In some cases the new form is constructed by adding the ending directly to the root. These words formed the so-called root-declension.
In Old English there was also a group of -es-stems denoting children.
NOUN IN MIDDLE ENGLISH. The grammatical category of gender was lost in Middle English. In Chaucer’s time gender was a lexical (semantic) category, like in Modern English. (nouns are referred to as “he” or “she” if they denote human beings and as “it” if they denote animals and inanimale thing).
The categories of case and number were presented in a modifical shape. In Middle English the number of cases reduced from 4 to 2. The syncretism of cases (when one and the same form denotes different cases) lasted for many years.
In Middle English the system of declension became more regular and uniform. Homonymous forms in Old English noun paradigms caused neutralization of the grammatical oppositions; similar endings, employed in different declensions, disrupted the group of nouns into morphological classes. Even in Old English the endings used in ā-stems, ō-stems, and n-stems were added to the same gender. This is how the noun declension tended to be re-arranged on basic of gender.
The grammatical category of Number proved to be the most stable of all nominal categories. Two numbers have been preserved through all historical periods.
MODERN ENGLISH NOUNS .In late modern English the ending –es was the prevalent marker of nouns in the plural. In early New English it extended to more nouns- to the new words appearing in English vocabulary, to many words of other way of plural formation or which employed –es as just of the variant endings.
Thus, we see that the complicated noun paradigm that existed in Old English was greatly simplified in Middle English, which is reflected in the following:
reduction of the number of declensions.
reduction of the number of grammatical categories
reduction of the number of categorial forms within one of two remaining grammatical categories- the category of number.
The plural ending –es underwent several phonetic changes: the voicing of fricatives and the loss of unstressed vowels in the final syllables.
The Middle English plural ending –en lost its former productivity and is found nowdays only in oxen, children and brothren, poetic kine (cow). (Children and brothren in Old English belonged to the es-stems with –ru in the plural.)
The small group of Middle English nouns with homonymous forms of the singular and plural has been reduced to three “exceptions” in Modern English: deer, sheep, and swine.
The group of former root-stems has survived as exceptions man, tooth and the like.
The nouns wife-wives and the like have retained consonant interchange.
Now a few words about exception tooth- teeth. In Old English plural ending was –i: tōp- tōp+i. Letter ō compared to the ending –i: top > tēp > tēth > teeth
Also the words foot- feet, goose- geese.
All modern irregular noun forms are according to their origin.
A set of declined forms of the same word pattern is called a declension
OE Strong (a,o,i,u -stem). Weak decl - n -m,f,n. es -n. room-stem (Root-stemm formed some cases not by an inflexional ending, but by the chance of the root vowel due to mutation)-no form suffixes.ME- The one is the former a-declention and n-decl, which of former feminine noun( weak decl). The root-decl. has lost some words, but it cont to exist. The noun has 2 cases: the Common and Possessive. The weak decl. has no case forms at all. Noun was rejected into reduction of their flexion. All vowels endings –e-. OE a-stem, became the productive type. Grammatical gender was lost and difference between Weak and Strong decl. disappeared. (-n)/: -s- became for Pl all nouns (for G). Some nouns retain Pl with o-inflexions. For root-stem nouns their mutated forms were used only in Pl. Weak decl. –n- express the Pl.
The original stem suffixes were formed both by vowels and by consonants. Thus there were two respective principal groups of declensions in Old English: the vowel declension ("strong" declension) and the consonant declension ("weak" declension). The vowel (strong) declension comprises four principal Paradigms: the a-stem, the o-stem, the u-stem and the i-stem paradigm. The consonant declension comprises nouns with, the stem originally ending in -n, -r, -s and some other consonants. In rare cases, however, the new form is constructed by adding the ending directly to the root. It is these words that formed the so-called root-stem declension.
Vowel-Stems. Declension of a-stem nouns. This type of declension consists of the masculine and the neuter genders of Old English nouns. As a rule those are common
The paradigm of the a-stem nouns is characterised by the homonymity of the Nominative and Accusative case-forms. The rest of the forms retain their endings.The difference between the genders of the nouns is clearly seen from the different endings in the Nominative and the Accusative plural, i.e. -as for the masculine and -u for the neuter. Consonant stems. Declension of n-stem nouns The consonant declensions consisted of nouns with the stem originally ending in -n, -r, -s and other consonants. The n-stem class was formed by nouns of all the three genders, such as nama (name.) — masculine, tunge (tongue) — feminine, еазе (eye) — neuter.The n-stem was the most important among all the consonant stem declensions. This class of nouns was composed of common words. The group was very extensive in Old English and like the a-stem declension it exhibited a tendency to spread its forms over other declensions. Declension of root-stem nouns
This class was not extensive and stood apart among other Old English nouns due to peculiarities of form-building which was partly retained in Modern English. Unlike other classes the root-stem nouns such as man (man, masculine), mus (mouse, feminine) originally had no stem-suffix the grammatical ending was added directly to the root. As a result of that in the Dative Singular and the Nominative and the Accusative Plural the root-vowel had undergone palatal mutation due to the [i]-sound in the grammatical ending of these forms. Later the ending was dropped and vowel interchange remained the only means of differentiating the given forms in the paradigm.