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Bishkek Humanities University named after K. Karasaev

The Faculty of European Civilizations

The Theory and Practice of Translation Department

Course paper

The evolution of grammatical categories of English noun

Done by:

Ibragimova Sh., group A-13-1

Bishkek-2015



Plan

• Introduction
• Chapter 1. The English noun
• 1.1 The definition of English noun
• 1.2 Semantic Characteristics of English Nouns
• 1.3 Grammatical Categories. The Use of Cases
• 1.4 The Category Of Number of the English noun
• 2. Morphological Classification of Nouns. Declensions
• 2.1 The noun. Decay of Noun Declensions in Early Middle English
• Conclusion
• Bibliography


Introduction

By learning English one can learn not only a language but culture, history, traditions and values of people, of English speaking countries as well.

The theme of this course paper sounds as following: «The Evolution of grammatical categories of English noun».

The aim of this work is to explore the evolution of grammatical categories of English noun.

The theoretical value of the course paper is that it can serve as an additional resource for the aspect «History of language».

The practical value is that it can serve as an additional resource for seminars, individual reading, and broaden background knowledge of the learners.

The topicality of this work is that this work can be helpful for the students of English department for lectures.

The tasks of this work are following:

1. To give definition to term «Noun».

2. To describe main features of English nouns.

3. To define grammatical categories of English nouns.

The structure of the course paper is following:

- Content

- Introduction

- Chapter I

- Chapter II

- Conclusion

- Bibliography

The main part of this course work includes several items. There we discussed such problems as definition of nouns, main features of English nouns, their grammatical categories.

In the conclusion to this course work, we tried to draw some results from the scientific investigations made within the main part of our course work.

In bibliography part, we mentioned 9 sources of which were used while compiling the present work. It includes linguistic books and articles dealing with the theme, a number of used dictionaries, encyclopedias and some internet sources.



Chapter 1. The English noun

1.1 The definition of English noun

Of all the parts of speech, nouns are perhaps the most important. A noun is a word that identifies a person, animal, place, thing, or idea. Here, we'll take a closer look at what makes a noun a noun, and we'll provide some noun examples, along with some advice for using nouns in your sentences.

· Person - A term for a person, whether proper name, gender, title, or class, is a noun.

· Animal - A term for an animal, whether proper name, species, gender, or class is a noun.

· Place - A term for a place, whether proper name, physical location, or general locale is a noun.

· Thing - A term for a thing, whether it exists now, will exist, or existed in the past is a noun.

· Idea - A term for an idea, be it a real, workable idea or a fantasy that might never come to fruition is a noun.

The word «noun» comes from the Latin nomen meaning «name». Word classes like nouns were first described by Sanskrit grammarian Panini and ancient Greeks like Dionysius Thorax, and defined in terms of their morphological properties. For example, in Ancient Greece, nouns can be inflected for grammatical case, such as dative or accusative. Verbs, on the other hand, can be inflected for tenses, such as past, present or future, while nouns cannot. Aristotle also had a notion of onomata (nouns) and rhemata (verbs) which, however, does not exactly correspond our notions of verbs and nouns. In her dissertation, Vinokurova has a more detailed discussion of the historical origin of the notion of a noun.

Expressions of natural language will have properties at different levels. They have formal properties, like what kinds of morphological prefixes or suffixes they can take, and what kinds of other expressions they can combine with. But they also have semantic properties, i.e. properties pertaining to their meaning. The definition of nouns on the top of this page is thus a formal definition. That definition is uncontroversial, and has the advantage that it allows us to effectively distinguish nouns from non-nouns. However, it has the disadvantage that it does not apply to nouns in all languages. For example in Russian, there are no definite articles, so one cannot define nouns by means of those. There are also several attempts of defining nouns in terms of their semantic properties. Many of these are controversial, but some are discussed below.

In traditional school grammars, one often encounters the definition of nouns that they are all and only those expressions that refer to a person, place, thing, event, substance, quality, or idea, etc. This is a semantic definition. It has been criticized by contemporary linguists as being quite uninformative. Part of the problem is that the definition makes use of relatively general nouns («thing», «phenomenon», «event») to define what nouns are. The existence of such general nouns shows us that nouns are organized in taxonomic hierarchies. But other kinds of expressions are also organized in hierarchies. For example all of the verbs «stroll», «saunter,» «stride,» and «tread» are more specific words than the more general «walk.» The latter is more specific than the verb «move»/ But it is unlikely that such hierarchies can be used to define nouns and verbs. Furthermore, an influential theory has it that verbs like «kill» or «die» refer to events, and so they fall under the definition. Similarly, adjectives like «yellow» or «difficult» might be thought to refer to qualities, and adverbs like «outside» or «upstairs» seem to refer to places. Worse still, a trip into the woods can be referred to by the verbs «stroll» or «walk»/ But verbs, adjectives and adverbs are not nouns, and nouns aren't verbs. So the definition is not particularly helpful in distinguishing nouns from other parts of speech.



1.2 Semantic Characteristics of English Nouns

Nouns fall under two classes: proper nouns and common nouns. The word proper is from Lat. proprius 'one's own'. Hence, a proper name means one's own individual name, as distinct from a common name that can be given to a class of individuals. The name common is from Lat. Communes; and means that something is shared by several things or individuals that possess some common characteristics.

Proper nouns:

Proper nouns have two distinct features: They name specific one-of-a-kind items, and they begin with capital letters, no matter where they occur within a sentence.

In the following sentences, proper noun examples are compared with common nouns. Notice that the proper nouns are specific and unique, while the common nouns are much more general in nature.

It's easy to use proper nouns, once you know what they are. Simply place them in your sentences as you would common nouns, ensuring that you capitalize them.

Here are some examples:

Brett had hoped for an easy teacher for his algebra class, but he got Ms. Boggs, whose unreasonable demands and short temper made the semester unbearable.

> Teacher is a common noun. Ms. Boggs is a proper noun.

Gloria had a craving, and not just any cookie would do. She went to the store and bought a box of Oreos.

> Cookie is a common noun. Oreos is a proper noun.

We wanted to try a new restaurant, so we went to Taste of Thai.

> Restaurant is a common noun. Taste of Thai is a proper noun.

Common nouns: The standard definition of a noun is that it names a person, place, or thing. But that is not all.

A noun can refer to anything that is living or non-living, animate or inanimate. It can also name a place or an abstract idea.

A common noun is your everyday noun, like road, cat, love, mother, or park. A common noun is the more general version of a proper noun which names a specific living or non-living thing, place, or idea.

Types of Common Nouns.

There are five general types of common nouns: countable, uncountable, collective, concrete, and abstract. We will look at each one of these and explain the rules of usage.

Countable nouns can be both singular and plural and are able to be shown with a number, like five cats or a hundred miles. A singular countable noun must be preceded by a determiner. This would be a word that clarifies, like: a, an, the, that, this, one, our, my, or which. Examples include: «The dolphin is gray», «My car is red» and «Which book is yours?»

Uncountable nouns are only used in the singular tense and you can not use «a» or «an» with them. Certain quantifiers can be used such as: any, some, or much. Examples include: «coffee, oil, air, happiness, sugar, water, money, and luggage. Sentences that show uncountable nouns are: «There is too much furniture here» and «I need a lot of love».

Collective nouns represent a group of things. The singular use of them would refer to one unit or group and the plural would refer to more than one unit. Examples include: family, class, team, department, faculty, jury, school, society, or troupe.

Concrete nouns represent something physical that can be experienced through the senses. They can be common, proper, singular, plural, countable, noncountable, or collective. Examples include: fish, song, house, computers, salt, cheese, Mary Brown, Disneyland, and senate.

Abstract nouns refer to things that are not concrete; they can not be seen, felt, heard, smelled, or tasted. They refer to emotions, ideas, concepts, traits, experiences, or a state of being. Examples are: love, hatred, trust, deceit, culture, curiosity, maturity, sympathy, democracy, patience, and peace.

Nouns are basic to sentence structure because they, along with pronouns, provide the subject of the sentence.

1.3 Grammatical Categories. The Use of Cases

The OE noun had two grammatical or morphological categories: number and case.

The category of number consisted of two members, singular and plural. As will be seen below, they were well distinguished formally in all the declensions, there being very few homonymous forms.

The noun had four cases: Nominative, Genitive, Dative and Accusative. In most declensions two, or even three, forms were homonymous, so that the formal distinction of cases was less consistent than that of numbers.

Before considering the declension of nouns, we shall briefly touch upon the meaning and use of cases. The functions of cases in OE require little explanation for the Russian student, since they are those, which ought to be expected in a language with a well-developed case system.

The Nom. can be loosely defined as the case of the active agent, for it was the case of the subject mainly used with verbs denoting activity; the Nom. could also indicate the subject characterised by a certain quality or state; could serve as a predicative and as the case of address, there being no special Vocative case, e. g.:

ðæt flod weox ðâ and âb¿r upp ðone arc -- subject, active agent ('that flood increased then and bore up the arc')

wearð ðâ ¿lc ðing cwices âdrenct -- subject, recipient of an action or state ('was then everything alive drowned')

Hç w¿s swiðe spçdig man -- predicative ('He was a very rich man')

Sunu mîn, hlyste minre lâre -- address ('My son, listen to my teaching').

The Gen. case was primarily the case of nouns and pronouns serving as attributes to other nouns. The meanings of the Gen. were very complex and can only roughly be grouped under the headings «Subjective» and «Objective» Gen. Subjective Gen. is associated with the possessive meaning and the meaning of origin, e. g.:

Beowulf gçata ' Beowulf of the Geats'. hiora scipu «their ships»

Objective Gen. is seen in such instances as ðæs landes sceawung 'surveying of the land'; and is associated with what is termed «partitive meaning» as in sum hund scipa 'a hundred of ships', hûsa sçlest 'best of the houses'. The use of the Gen. as an object to verbs and adjectives was not infrequent, though the verbs which regularly took a Gen. object often interchanged it with other cases, cf.: hç bâd ... westanwindes 'he waited for the west wind'

frige menn ne môtan wealdan heora sylfra - 'free men could not control themselves' (also with the Acc. wealdan hie.).

Dat. was the chief case used with prepositions, e. g.: on morgenne 'in the morning' from ðæm here 'from the army', ða sende sç cyning tôðæm here and him cyðan hçt 'then sent the king to the army and ordered (him) to inform them'.

The last example illustrates another frequent use of the Dat.: an indirect personal object. The OE Dat. case could convey an instrumental meaning, indicating the means or manner of an action: hit hagolade stânum 'it hailed (with) stones', worhte AElfred cyning lytle werede geweorc 'King Alfred built defense works with a small troop'.

Alongside the Acc., Dat. could indicate the passive subject of a state expressed by impersonal verbs and some verbs of emotion:

him gelicode heora ðçawas 'he liked their customs' (lit. 'him pleased their customs').

The Acc. case was the form that indicated a relationship to a verb. Being a direct object it denoted the recipient of an action, the result of the action and other meanings:

se wulf nimð and tôd¿lð ðâ scçap 'the wolf takes and scatters the sheep'. (Its use as an object of impersonal verbs, similar to the use of Dat., is illustrated by hine nânes ðinges ne lyste 'nothing pleased him').

It is important to note that there was considerable fluctuation in the use of cases in OE. One and the same verb could be construed with different cases without any noticeable change of meaning. The semantic functions of the Gen., Dat. and Acc. as objects commonly overlapped and required further specification by means of prepositions.

1.4 The Category Of Number of the English noun

The category of number of English nouns is the system of opposites (such as girl - girls, foot - feet, etc.) showing whether the noun stands for one object or more than one, in other words, whether its grammatical meaning is 'oneness' or 'more-than-oneness' of objects.

The connection of the category with the world of material reality, though indirect, is quite transparent. Its meanings reflect the existence of individual objects and groups of objects in the material world.

All number opposites are identical in content: they contain two particular meanings of 'singular' and 'plural' united by the general meaning of the category, that of 'number'. But there is a considerable variety of form in number opposites, though it is not so great as in the Russian language.

An English noun lexeme can contain two number opposites at most (toy - boys, boy's - boys'). Many lexemes have but one oppose me (table - tables) and many others have no opposites at all (ink, news).

In the opposite boy - boys 'singularity' is expressed by a zero morpheme and 'plurality' is marked by the positive morpheme /-z/, in spelling - .s. In other words, the 'singular' member of the opposite is not marked, and the 'plural' member is marked.

In the opposite boy's - boys' both members have positive morphemes -`s, - s', but these morphemes can be distinguished only in writing. In the spoken language their forms do not differ, so with regard to each other they are unmarked. They can be distinguished only by their combinability (cf. a boy's head, boys' heads).

In a few noun lexemes of foreign origin both members of a number opposite are marked, e.g. symposium - symposia, genus - genera, phenomenon-phenomena, etc. But in the process of assimilation this peculiarity of foreign nouns gets gradually lost, and instead of medium - media a new opposite develops, medium - mediums; instead of formula - formulae, the usual form now is formula - formulas. In this process, as we see, the foreign grammatical morphemes are neglected as such. The `plural' morpheme is dropped altogether. The 'singular' morpheme becomes part of the stem. Finally, the regular - s ending is added to form the 'plural' opposite. As a result the 'singular' becomes unmarked, as typical of English, and the 'plural' gets its usual mark, the suffix - s.

Since the 'singular' member of a number opposite is not marked, the form of the opposite is, as a rule, determined by the form of the 'plural' morpheme, which, in its turn, depends upon the stem of the lexeme.

In the overwhelming majority of cases the form of the 'plural' morpheme is /-s/, /-z/, or /-z/, in spelling - (e) s, e. g, books, boys, matches.

With the stem ox - the form of the 'plural' morpheme is - en /-n/.

In the opposite man-men the form of the 'plural' morpheme is the vowel change /? > e/. In woman - women ii is /u > i/, in foot - feet it is /u - i:/, etc.

In child - children the form of the 'plural' morpheme is complicated. It consists of the vowel change /ai > i/ and the suffix - ren.

In sheep - sheep the 'plural' is not marked, thus coinciding in form with the 'singular'. They can be distinguished only by their combinability: `one sheep', `five sheep', `a sheep was…', `sheep were…', `this sheep', `these sheep'. The 'plural' coincides in form with the 'singular' also in `deer, fish, carp, perch, trout, cod, salmon', etc. [G.O. Curme. Syntax. Bost., N.Y., Lnd., Heat., 1931, p. 542]; [O. Jespersen. Essentials of English Grammar. N.Y., 1938, p. 201].

All the 'plural' forms enumerated here are forms of the same morpheme. This can be proved, as we know, by the identity of the 'plural' meaning, and the complementary distribution of these forms, i.e. the fact that different forms are used with different stems.

As already mentioned B.S. Khaimovich, B.I. Rogovskaya. A Course in English Grammar. 1966 p. 48, with regard to the category of number English nouns fall into two subclasses: countable and uncountable. The former have number opposites, the latter have not. Uncountable nouns are again subdivided into those having no plural opposites and those having no singular opposites.

Nouns like milk, geometry, self-possession having no plural opposites are usually called by a Latin name - singularia tantum. Nouns like outskirts, clothes, goods having no singular opposites are known as pluralia tantum.

As a matter of fact, those nouns which have no number opposites are outside the grammatical category of number. But on the analogy of the bulk of English nouns they acquire oblique (or lexicon-grammatical) meanings of number. Therefore singularia tantum are often treated as singulars and pluralia tantum as plurals.

This is justified both by their forms and by their combinability.

Cf. This (table, book, milk, love) is…

These (tables, books, clothes, goods) are…

When combinability and form contradict each other, combinability is decisive, which accounts for the fact that `police' or `cattle' are regarded as plurals, and `measles', `mathematics as singulars.

The lexicon-grammatical meaning of a class (or of a subclass) of words is, as we know, an abstraction from the lexical meanings of the words of the class, and depends to a certain extent on those lexical meanings. Therefore singularia tantum usually include nouns of certain lexical meanings. They are mostly material, abstract and collective nouns, such as sugar, gold, butter, brilliance, constancy, selfishness, humanity, soldiery, peasantry.

Yet it is not every material, abstract or collective noun that belongs to the group of singularia tantum (e. g. a plastic, a feeling, a crowd) and, what is more important, not in all of its meanings does a noun belong to this group.

As we have already seen B.S. Khaimovich, B.I. Rogovskaya. A Course in English Grammar. 1966 p. 49, variants of the same lexeme may belong to different subclasses of a part of speech. In most of their meanings the words joy and sorrow as abstract nouns are singularia tantum.

E.g. He has been a good friend both in joy and in sîrãîw. (Horney).

But when concrete manifestations are meant, these nouns are countable and have plural opposites, e. g. the joys and sorrows of life.

Likewise, the words copper, tin, hair as material nouns are usually singularia tantum, but when they denote concrete objects, they become countable and get plural opposites: a copper - coppers, a tin - tins, a hair - hairs.

Similarly, when the nouns wine, steel, salt denote some sort or variety of the substance, they become countable.[ B.S. Khaimovich, B.I. Rogovskaya. A Course in English Grammar. 1966 p. 49]

E.g. an expensive wine - expensive wines.

`Joy' and `a joy', `beauty' and `a beauty', `copper' and `a copper', `hair' and `a hair' and many other pairs of this kind are not homonyms, as suggested by some grammarians, but variants of lexemes related by internal conversion.

If all such cases were regarded as homonyms, the number of homonyms in the English language would be practically limitless. If only some of them were treated as homonyms, that would give rise to uncontrolled subjectivity.

The group of pluralia tantum is mostly composed of nouns denoting objects consisting of two or more parts, complex phenomena or ceremonies, e. g. tongs, pincers, trousers, nuptials, obsequies. Here also belong some nouns with a distinct collective or material meaning, e.g. clothes, eaves, sweets.

Since in these words the - s suffix does not function as a grammatical morpheme, it gets lexicalized and develops into an inseparable part of the stem Ë. Ñ. Áàðõóäàðîâ, Ä. À. Øòåëèíã, îð. cit., ð. 36.. This, probably, underlies the fact that such nouns as mathematics, optics, linguistics, mumps, measles are treated as singularia tantum.

Nouns like police, militia, cattle, poultry are pluralia tantum, judging by their combinability, though not by form Î. Jespersen. Essentials of English Grammar. Lnd., 1943, p. 208..

People in the meaning of «íàðîä» is a countable noun. In the meaning of «ëþäè» it belongs to the pluralia tantum. Family in the sense of «a group of people who are related» is a countable noun. In the meaning of «individual members of this group» it belongs to the pluralia tantum. Thus, the lexeme family has two variants:

Sg. PL

1) family families

2) - family

E. g. Almost every family in the village has sent a man to the army. (Horney).

Those were the oldest families in Jorkshire. (Black).

Her family were of a delicate constitution. (Bronte).

Similar variants are observed in the lexemes committee, government, board, crew, etc.

Colour in the meaning «red, green, blue, etc». is a countable noun. In the meaning «appearance of reality or truth» (e. g. His torn clothes gave colour to his story that lie had been attacked by robbers. A. Horney) it has no plural opposite and belongs to the singularia tantum. Colours in the sense of «materials used by painters and artists» has no singular opposite and belongs to the pluralia tantum.

Thus, the lexeme has three variants:

Sg. Pl.

1) colour colours

2) colour -

3) - colours.

When grammarians write that the lexical meanings of some plurals differ from those of their singular opposites B.Í. Æèãàäëî, È.Ï. Èâàíîâà, Ë.Ë. Èîôèê, îð. cit., ð. 30., they simply compare different variants of a lexeme.

Sometimes variants of a lexeme may belong to the same lexico-grammatical subclass and yet have different forms of number opposemes.

Cf. brother (son of same parents) - brothers

brother (fellow member) - brethren

fish - fish (e.g. I caught five fish yesterday.)

fish - fishes ('different species', e. g. ocean fishes).

A collective noun is a word that designates a group of objects or beings regarded as a whole, such as «flock», «team», or «corporation». Although many languages treat collective nouns as singular, in others they may be interpreted as plural. In British English, phrases such as the committee are meeting are common (the so-called agreement in sensu «in meaning», that is, with the meaning of a noun, rather than with its form). The use of this type of construction varies with dialect and level of formality.

All languages are able to specify the quantity of referents. They may do so by lexical means with words such as English a few, some, one, two, five hundred. However, not every language has a grammatical category of number. Grammatical number is expressed by morphological and/or syntactic means. That is, it is indicated by certain grammatical elements, such as through affixes or number words. Grammatical number may be thought of as the indication of semantic number through grammar.

Languages that express quantity only by lexical means lack a grammatical category of number. For instance, in Khmer, neither nouns nor verbs carry any grammatical information concerning number: such information can only be conveyed by lexical items such as khlah 'some', pii-bey 'a few', and so on.

Most languages of the world have formal means to express differences of number. The most widespread distinction, as found in English and many other languages, involves a simple two-way number contrast between singular and plural (car / cars; child / children, etc.). Other more elaborate systems of number are described below.

noun sentence grammatical morphological



2. Morphological Classification of Nouns. Declensions

The most remarkable feature of OE nouns was their elaborate system of declensions, which was a sort of morphological classification. The total number of declensions, including both the major and minor types, exceeded twenty-five. All in all there were only ten distinct endings (plus some phonetic variants of these endings) and a few relevant root-vowel interchanges used in the noun paradigms; yet every morphological class had either its own specific endings or a specific succession of markers. Historically, the OE system of declensions 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.

In the first place, the morphological classification of OE nouns rested upon the most ancient (IE) grouping of nouns according to the stem-suffixes. Stem-suffixes could consist of vowels (vocalic stems, e. g. a-stems, i-stems), of consonants (consonantal stems, e. g. n-stems), of sound sequences, e. g. -ja-stems, -nd-stems. Some groups of nouns had no stem-forming suffix or had a «zero-suffix»; they are usually termed «root-stems» and are grouped together with consonantal stems, as their roots ended in consonants, e. g. OE man, bôc (NE man, book).

The loss of stem-suffixes as distinct component parts had led to the formation of different sets of grammatical endings. The merging of the stem-suffix with the original grammatical ending and their phonetic weakening could result in the survival of the former stem-suffix in a new function, as a grammatical ending; thus n-stems had many forms ending in -an (from the earlier -*eni, -*enaz, etc.); u-stems had the inflection -u in some forms.

Sometimes both elements -- the stem-suffix and the original ending -- were shortened or even dropped (e. g. the ending of the Dat. sg -e from the earlier -*ai, Nom. and Acc. pl -as from the earlier -os; the zero-ending in the Nom. and Acc. sg) in a-stems.

Another reason, which accounts for the division of nouns into numerous declensions is their grouping according to gender. OE nouns distinguished three genders: Masc., Fem. and Neut. Though originally a semantic division, gender in OE was not always associated with the meaning of nouns. Sometimes a derivational suffix referred a noun to a certain gender and placed it into a certain semantic group, e. g. abstract nouns built with the help of the suffix -ðu were Fern. -- OE lenðu, hyhðu (NE length, height), nomina agentis with the suffix -ere were Masc. -- OE fiscere, bôcere (NE fisher, 'learned man'). The following nouns denoting human beings show, however, that grammatical gender did not necessarily correspond to sex: alongside Masc. and Fem. nouns denoting males and females there were nouns with «unjustified» gender, cf:

OE widuwa, Masc. ('widower') -- OE widow, Fem. (NE widow);

OE spinnere, Masc. (NE spinner) -- OE spinnestre. Fem. ('female spinner'; note NE spinster with a shift of meaning) and nouns like OE wîf, Neut. (NE wife). OE mægden, Neut. (NE maiden, maid), OE wîfman, Masc. (NE woman, originally a compound word whose second component -man was Masc.).

In OE gender was primarily a grammatical distinction; Masc., Fem. and Neut. nouns could have different forms, even if they belonged to the same stem (type of declension).

The division into genders was in a certain way connected with the division into stems, though there was no direct correspondence between them: some stems were represented by nouns of one particular gender, e. g. o-stems were always Fem., others embraced nouns of two or three genders.[ «History of English» by Rastorguyeva, pp.98-99 ]

Other reasons accounting for the division into declensions were structural and phonetic: monosyllabic nouns had certain peculiarities as compared to polysyllabic;

monosyllables with a long root-syllable (that is, containing a long vowel plus a consonant or a short vowel plus two consonants -- also called «long-stemmed» nouns) differed in some forms from nouns with a short syllable (short-stemmed nouns).

The majority of OE nouns belonged to the a-stems, o-stems and n-stems. Special attention should also be paid to the root-stems which displayed specific peculiarities in their forms and have left noticeable traces in Mod E.

a-stems included Masc. and Neut. nouns. About one third of OE nouns were Masc. a-stems, e. g. cniht (NE knight), hâm (NE home), mûð (NE mouth); examples of Neut. nouns are:

lim (NE limb), hûs (NE house), ðing (NE thing). (Disyllabic nouns, e. g. finger, differed from monosyllables in that they could drop their second vowel in the oblique cases: Nom, sg finger, Gen. fingres, Dat. fingre, NE finger.

The forms in the a-stem declension were distinguished through grammatical endings (including the zero-ending). In some words inflections were accompanied by sound interchanges: nouns with the vowel [æ] in the root had an interchange [æ>a], since in some forms the ending contained a back vowel, e. g. Nom. sg dæge Gen. dæges -- Nom. and Gen. pl dagas, daga. If a noun ended in a fricative consonant, it became voiced in the intervocal position, cf. Nom. sg muð, wulf-- [0], [f] -- and Nom. pl muðas, wulfas -- [o], [v]. (Note that their modem descendants have retained the interchange: NE mouth -- mouths [0>ð], wolf-wolves, also house--houses and others.) These interchanges were not peculiar of a-stems alone and are of no significance as grammatical markers; they are easily accountable by phonetic reasons.

Neut. a-stems differed from Masc. in the pl of the Nom. and Acc. cases. Instead of-as they took -u for short stems (that is nouns with a short root-syllable) and did not add any inflection in the long-stemmed variant -- see Nom. and Acc. pl of scip and dçor in the table. Consequently, long-stemmed Neuters had homonymous sg and pl forms: dçor -- dçor, likewise sceap--sceap, ðing - ðing, hus--hus. This peculiarity of Neut. a-stems goes back to some phonetic changes in final unaccented syllables which have given rise to an important grammatical feature: an instance of regular homonymy or neutralisation of number distinctions in the noun paradigm. (Traces of this group of a-stems have survived as irregular pl forms in Mod E: sheep, deer, swine).

wa- and ja-stems differed from pure a-stems in some forms, as their endings contained traces of the elements -j- and -w-. Nom. and Acc. sg could end in -e which had developed from the weakened -j-, though in some nouns with a doubled final consonant it was lost -- cf. OE bridd (NE bird); in some forms -j- is reflected as -i- or -ig- e.g. Nom. here, Dat. herie, herige or herge ('army'). Short-stemmed wa-stems had -u in the Nom. and Acc. sg which had developed from the element -w- but was lost after a long syllable (in the same way as the plural ending of neuter a-stems described above); cf. OE bearu (NE bear) and cnço; -w- is optional but appears regularly before the endings of the oblique cases (see the declension of cnço in Table 2).

o-stems were all Fem., so there was no further subdivision according to gender. The variants with -j- and -w- decline like pure o-stems except that -w- appears before some endings, e.g. Nom. sceadu, the other cases --sceadwe (NE shadow). The difference between short-and long-stemmed o-stems is similar to that between respective a-stems: after a short syllable the ending -u is retained, after a long syllable it is dropped: wund, talu. Disyllabic o-stems, like a-stems, lost their second vowel in some case forms: Nom. ceaster, the other cases ceastre ('camp'), NE -caster, -Chester--a component of place-names). Like other nouns, o-stems could have an interchange of voiced and voiceless fricative consonants as allophones in intervocal and final position: glof--glofe [f>v] (NE glove). Among the forms of o-stems there occurred some variant forms with weakened endings or with endings borrowed from the weak declension -- with the element -n- wundena alongside wunda. Variation increased towards the end of the OE period.

The other vocalic stems, i-stems and u-stems, include nouns of different genders. Division into genders breaks up i-stems into three declensions, but is irrelevant for u-stems: Masc. and Fem. u-stems decline alike, e.g. Fem. duru (NE door) had the same forms as Masc. sunu shown in the table. The length of the root-syllable is important for both stems; it accounts for the endings in the Nom. and Acc. in the same way as in other classes: the endings -e, -u are usually preserved in short-stemmed nouns and lost in long-stemmed.

Comparison of the i-stems with a-stems reveals many similarities. Neut. i-stems are declined like Neut. ja-stems; the inflection of the Gen. for Masc. and Neut. i-stems is the same as in a-stems -es; alongside pl forms in -e we find new variant forms of Masc. nouns in -as, e. g. Nom., Acc. pl --winas 'friends' (among Masc. i-stems only names of peoples regularly formed their pl in the old way: Dene, Engle, NE Danes, Angles). It appears that Masc. i-stems adopted some forms from Masc. a-stems, while Neut. i-stems were more likely to follow the pattern of Neut. a-stems; as for Fem. i-stems, they resembled o-stems, except that the Acc. and Nom. were not distinguished as with other i-stems.

The most numerous group of the consonantal stems were n-stems or the weak declension, n-stems had only two distinct forms in the sg: one form for the Nom. case and the other for the three oblique cases; the element -n- in the inflections of the weak declension was a direct descendant of the old stem suffix -n, which had acquired a new, grammatical function, n-stems included many Masc. nouns, such as boga, cnotta, steorra (NE bow, knot, star), many Fem. nouns, e. g. cirice, eorðe, heorte, hlæfdige (NE church, earth, heart, lady) and only a few Neut. nouns: çaga (NE eye).

2.1 The noun. Decay of Noun Declensions in Early Middle English

The OE noun had the grammatical categories of Number and Case which were formally distinguished in an elaborate system of declensions. However, homonymous forms in the OE noun paradigms neutralised some of the grammatical oppositions; similar endings employed in different declensions - as well as the influence of some types upon other types - disrupted the grouping of nouns into morphological classes.

Increased variation of the noun forms in the late 10th c. and especially in the 11th and 12th c. testifies to impending changes and to a strong tendency toward a re-arrangement and simplification of the declensions. The number of variants of grammatical forms in the 11th and 12th c. was twice as high as in the preceding centuries. Among the variant forms there were direct descendants of OE forms with phonetically weakened endings (the so-called «historical forms») and also numerous analogical forms taken over from other parts of the same paradigms and from more influential morphological classes. The new variants of grammatical forms obliterated the distinction between the forms within the paradigms and the differences between the declensions, e.g.. Early ME fisshes and bootes, direct descendants of the OE Nom. and Acc. pl of Masc. a-stems fiscas, batas were used, as before, in the position of these cases and could also be used as variant forms of other cases Gen. and Dat. pi alongside the historical forms fisshe, hoofs. (OE Gen. pl. fisca, bâta) and fischen, booten or fisshe, boots (OE Dat. pl fiscum, batum); (NE fish, boat). As long as all these variants co-existed, it was possible to mark a form more precisely by using a variant with a fuller ending, but when some of the variants went out of use and the non-distinctive, levelled variants prevailed, many forms fell together. Thus after passing through the «variation stage» many formal oppositions were lost. The most numerous OE morphological classes of nouns were a-stems, o-stems and n-stems. Even in Late OE the endings used in these types were added by analogy to other kinds of nouns, especially if they belonged to the same gender. That is how the noun declensions tended to be re-arranged on the basis of gender.

The decline of the OE declension system lasted over three hundred years and revealed considerable dialectal differences. It started in the North of England and gradually spread southwards. The decay of inflectional endings in the Northern dialects began as early as the 10th c. and was virtually completed in the 11th; in the Midlands the process extended over the 12th c., while in the Southern dialects it lasted till the end of the 13th (in the dialect of Kent, the old inflectional forms were partly preserved even in the 14th c.).

The dialects differed not only in the chronology but also in the nature of changes. The Southern dialects rearranged and simplified the noun declensions on the basis of stem and gender distinctions. In Early ME they employed only four markers -es, -en, -e, and the root-vowel interchange plus the bare stem (the «zero «-inflection) but distinguished, with the help of these devices, several paradigms. Masc. and Neut. nouns had two declensions, weak and strong, with certain differences between the genders in the latter: Masc. nouns took the ending -es in the Nom., Acc. pl, while Neut. nouns had variant forms: Masc. fishes Neut. land/lande/landes. Most Fem. nouns belonged to the weak declension and were declined like weak Masc. and Neut. nouns. The root-stem declension, as before, had mutated vowels in some forms' and many variant forms which showed that the vowel interchange was becoming a marker of number rather than case.

In the Midland and Northern dialects the system of declension was much simpler. In fact, there was only one major type of declension and a few traces of other types. The majority of nouns took the endings of OE Masc. a-stems: -(e)s in the Gen. sg (from OE -es), -(e)s in the pi irrespective of case (from OE -as: Nom. and Acc. sg, which had extended to other cases).

A small group of nouns, former root-stems, employed a root-vowel interchange to distinguish the forms of number. Survivals of other OE declensions were rare and should be treated rather as exceptions than as separate paradigms. Thus several former Neut. a-stems descending from long-stemmed nouns could build their plurals with or without the ending -(e)s; sg hors -- pl hors or horses, some nouns retained weak forms with the ending -en alongside new forms in -es; some former Fem. nouns and some names of relations occur in the Gen. case without -(e)s like OE Fem. nouns, e. g. my fader soule, 'my father's soul'; In hope to standen in his lady grace 'In the hope of standing in his lady's grace' (Chaucer) though the latter can be regarded as a set phrase.

In Late ME, when the Southern traits were replaced by Central and Northern traits in the dialect of London, this pattern of noun declensions prevailed in literary English. The declension of nouns in the age of Chaucer, in its main features, was the same as in ME. The simplification of noun morphology was on the whole completed. Most nouns distinguished two forms: the basic form (with the «zero» ending) and the form in -(e)s. The nouns originally descending from other types of declensions for the most part had joined this major type, which had developed from Masc. a-stems.

Simplification of noun morphology affected the grammatical categories of the noun in different ways and to a varying degree. The OE Gender, being a classifying feature (and not a grammatical category proper) disappeared together with other distinctive features of the noun declensions. (Division into genders played a certain role in the decay of the OE declension system: in Late OE and Early ME nouns were grouped into classes or types of declension according to gender instead of stems.

In the 11th and 12th c. the gender of nouns was deprived of its main formal support the weakened and leveled endings of adjectives and adjective pronouns ceased to indicate gender. Semantically gender was associated with the differentiation of sex and therefore: the formal grouping into genders was smoothly and naturally superseded by a semantic division into inanimate and animate nouns, with a further subdivision of the latter into males and females.

In Chaucer's time gender is a lexical category, like in ME: nouns are referred to as «he» and «she» if they denote human beings, e. g She wolde wepe, if that she saw a mous. Caught in a trappe, if it were deed or bledde (Chaucer) «She» points here to a woman while «it» replaces the noun mous, which in OE was Fem. ('She would weep, if she saw a mouse caught in a trap, if it was dead or it bled.') (Sh.)

The grammatical category of Case was preserved but underwent profound changes in Early ME. The number of cases in the noun paradigm was reduced from four (distinguished in OE) to two in Late ME. The syncretism of cases was a slow process which went on step by step. As shown above even in OE the forms of the Nom. and Ace. were not distinguished in the pi, and in some classes they coincided also in the sg. In Early ME they fell together in both numbers.

In the strong declension the Dat. was sometimes marked by -e in the Southern dialects, though not in the North or in the Midlands; the form without the ending soon prevailed in all areas, and three OE cases, Nom., Acc. and Dat. fell together. Henceforth they can be called the Common case, as in present-day English.

Only the Gen. case was kept separate from the other forms, with more explicit formal distinctions in the singular than in the pi. In the 14th c. the ending -es of the Gen. sg had become almost universal, there being only several exceptions nouns which were preferably used in the uninflected form (names of relationships terminating in -r, some proper names, and some nouns in stereotyped phrases). In the pl the Gen. case had no special marker it was not distinguished from the Comm. case as the ending -(e)s through analogy, had extended to the Gen. either from the Comm. case pi or, perhaps, from the Gen. sg. This ending was generalised in the Northern dialects and in the Midlands (a survival of the OE Gen. pl form in -ena, ME -en(e), was used in Early ME only in the Southern districts). The formal distinction between cases in the pi was lost, except in the nouns which did not take -(e)s in the pl. Several nouns with a weak plural form in -en or with a vowel interchange, such as oxen and men, added the marker of the Gen. case -es to these forms: oxenes, mennes. In the 17th and 18th c. a new graphic marker of the Gen. case came into use: the apostrophe e. g. man's, children's: this device could be employed only in writing; in oral speech the forms remained homonymous.

The reduction in the number of cases was linked up with a change in the meanings and functions of the surviving forms. The Comm. case, which resulted from the fusion of three OE cases assumed all the functions of the former Nom., Acc., Dat. and also some functions of the Gen. The ME Comm. case had a very general meaning, which was made more specific by the context: prepositions, the meaning of the verb-predicate, the word order. With the help of these means it could express various meanings formerly belonging to different cases. The following passages taken from three translations of the Bible give a general idea of the transition; they show how the OE Gen. Dat. cases were replaced in ME, Early NE by prepositional phrases with the noun in the Comm. case. OE translation of the Gospels (10th c.) Eadige synd þa gastlican þearfan, forþam hyra ys heofena rice. (Gen.) Wyclifs translation (late 14th c. Blessed be the pore in spirit, for the kingdom in heuenes is heren. King James' Bible (17th c. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

The replacement of the Dat. by prepositional phrases had been well prepared by its wide use in OE as a case commonly governed by prepositions.

The main function of the Ace, case to present the direct object was fulfilled in ME by the Comm. case; the noun was placed next to the verb, or else its relations with the predicate were apparent from the meaning of the transitive verb and the noun, e. g. He knew the tavernes well in every town. For catel hadde they ynogh and rente (Chaucer) ('He knew well the taverns in every town for they had enough wealth and income'.)

The history of the Gen. case requires special consideration. Though it survived as a distinct form, its use became more limited: unlike OE it could not be employed in the function of an object to a verb or to an adjective. In ME the Gen. case is used only attributively, to modify a noun, but even in this function it has a rival prepositional phrases, above all the phrases with the preposition of. The practice to express genitival relations by the of-phrase goes back to OE. It is not uncommon in lfric's writings (10th c). but its regular use instead of the inflectional Gen. does not become established until the 12th c. The use of the of-phrase grew rapidly in the 13th and 14th c. In some texts there appears a certain differentiation between the synonyms: the inflectional Gen. is preferred with animate nouns, while the of-phrase is more widely used with inanimate ones. Usage varies, as can be seen from the following examples from Chaucer: Ful worthy was he in his lordes werre ('He was very worthy in his lord's campaigns')

He had maad fulmany a mariage of yonge wommen ('He made many marriages of young women') And specially, from every shires ende, Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende.

('And especially from the end of every shire of England they went to Canterbury').

Various theories have been advanced to account for the restricted use of the Gen. case, particularly for the preference of the inflectional Gen. with «personal» nouns. It has been suggested that the tendency to use the inflectional Gen. with names of persons is a continuation of an old tradition pertaining to word order. It has been noticed that the original distinction between the use of the Gen. with different kind of nouns was not in form but in position. The Gen. of «personal» nouns was placed before the governing noun, while the Gen. of other nouns was placed after it. The post-positive Gen. was later replaced by the of-phrase with the result that the of-phrase came to be preferred with inanimate nouns and the inflectional Gen. with personal (animate) ones. Another theory attributes the wider use of the inflectional Gen. with animate nouns to the influence of a specific possessive construction containing a possessive pronoun: the painter'ys name, where 'ys is regarded as a shortened form of his «the painter his name». It is assumed that the frequent use of these phrases may have reinforced the inflectional Gen., which could take the ending -is, -ys alongside -es and thus resembled the phrase with the pronoun his, in which the initial [h] could be dropped.

It may be added that the semantic differentiation between the prepositional phrase and the s'-Gen. became more precise in the New period, each acquiring its own set of meanings, with only a few overlapping spheres. (It has been noticed, that in present-day English the frequency of the 's-Gen. is growing again at the expense of the of-phrase.)

The other grammatical category of the noun. Number proved to be the most stable of all the nominal categories. The noun preserved the formal distinction of two numbers through all the historical periods. Increased variation in Early ME did not obliterate number distinctions. On the contrary, it showed that more uniform markers of the pl spread by analogy to different morphological classes of nouns, and thus strengthened the formal differentiation of number. The pl forms in ME show obvious traces of numerous OE noun declensions. Some of these traces have survived in later periods. In Late ME the ending -es was the prevalent marker of nouns in the pl.

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