19. The morphological structure of the noun in Proto-Germanic.

The original reconstructed structure of noun in PG as in other Indo-European languages included three main morphological components: root, stem-forming suffix (which made up a stem) and inflection. In addition, the stress was movable. The root rendered lexical meaning; stem-forming suffix was placed between root and inflection. Later the stem-suffix merged with other components of the word (inflection) and the three-morpheme structure was transformed into a two-morpheme structure: stem and Inflexion with fixed stress on the first root syllable in the stem.

Neither of Indo-European languages preserved words with an ideal three-component structure.

In Gothic, as in the oldest periods of the other Germanic languages, nouns are divided into two great classes, according as the stem originally ended in a vowel or consonant. Nouns, whose stems originally ended in a vowel, belong to the vocalic or so-called Strong Declension. Those, whose stems end in –n, belong to the Weak Declension.

20. Old Germanic strong declension of nouns. P. 73

Traditionally, the vocalic stems ( stems with the stem-suffix containing a vowel) are called strong nouns or strong declension.

a-declension, masculine and neuter nouns – the most numerous

Nominative	Singular	Plural
	dags “day”	dagōs
Accusative/Vocative	Dag	dagans
Genetive	Dagis	dagē
Dative	Daga	dagam

There were 2 variants of a-stems nouns. The first type was preceded by –j- and made up –ja- stems, another was preceded by –w- and made up –wa- stem.

The ō-declension include feminine nouns only and correspond to IE ā-declension

Singular	Plural
Nom.Acc. giba ‘gift’	gibōs
Gen. gibōs	gibō
Dat. Gibái	gibōm

Like giba are declined a very large number of feminine nouns, as bida “request”, bōka “book”, kara “care’, fēra “country”, mōta “custom-house”, rūna “mystery”, háirda etc.

The i-declension contains only masculine and feminine nouns and correspond to the Latin and Greek i-declension.

Singular	Plural
Nom. gasts “guest”	gasteis
Acc. gast	gastins
Gen. gastis	gastē
Dat. gasta	gastim
Voc. Gast	-

Like gasts are declined arms, “arm”, balgs “wine-skin”, barms “bosom”, gards “house”, saggws “song”, sáiws “sea” etc.

u-stems nouns contained the nouns of all gender.

Sunus, sunjus

Sunaus suniwe

Sunau sunum

Sunu sununs

21. Old Germanic weak declension of nouns.

The consonantal stems are called weak nouns or the weak declension.

There were 4 types of consonantal stems of nouns:

1) n-stems (all the gender)

Guma gumans

Gumins gumane

Gumin gumam

Guman gumans

2) r-stems ( masculine and feminine gender only)

They were not numerous: words denoted fadar, modir, brothar, swistar, dauhtar ( батько, мати, брат, сестра, дочка)

Brothar brothrjus

Brothra brothre

Brothr brothrum

Brothar brothruns

3) s-stems (mostly neutral gender)

They were not numerous. Many nouns of this class in PIE merged to another class of stems in Germanic languages.

4) nd-stems (masculine gender)

They are not numerous. This class originated from IE Particiole 1 with the *-nt- stems. Then Participle 1 merged into nouns.