System of Declensions. Old English was a synthetic language, i.e

Parts of Speech

Old English Morphology

Old English was a synthetic language, i.e. there were a lot of inflections.

In OE 9 parts of speech had already been distinguished:

changeable	1. Noun	Nominal Categories: Number, Case, Gender, Degrees of Comparison, Determination
2. Adjective
3. Pronoun
4. Numeral
5. Verb	Verbal Categories: Tense, Mood, Person, Number, Voice, Aspect, Order, Posteriority
unchangeable	6. Adverb(only Degrees of Comparison)	-
7. Prepositions	-
8. Conjunctions	-
9. Interjections	-

Below all notional parts of speech will be discussed, their categories described and the meanings of these categories stated as related to the Old English Period

Noun

Number – Singular (Sg) and Plural (Pl).

Gender – Masculine (M), Feminine (F), Neuter (N).

Case – Nominative (Nom) (agent), Genitive (Gen) (attribute), Dative (Dat) (instrument, indirect/prepositional object), Accusative (Acc) (recipient, direct/prepositionless object).

Prior to reading this point, see PG word-structure, Lecture 4.

In OE there were 25 declensions of nouns. All nouns were grouped into declensions according to:

· stem-suffix;

· Gender.

We will mention only the most numerous declensions/stems here:

Strong Vocalic Stems	Weak Consonantal Stems
Stem-suffix	Gender	Stem-suffix	Gender
a-stem	M, N	n-stem	M, N, F
o-stem	F	r, s, nd-stems	M, N, F
i-stem	M, N, F	root-stem	M, F
u-stem	M, F

These stems will be discussed more precisely in Lecture 15.

Adjectives

Number – Singular (Sg) and Plural (Pl).

Gender – Masculine (M), Feminine (F), Neuter (N).

Case – Nominative (Nom), Genitive (Gen), Dative (Dat), Accusative (Acc) + Instrumental (Instr).

Instrumental Case was used to express instrumental meaning but only in the adjective while the noun stood in Dative Case:

by/with + Adjective (Instr) + Noun (Dat)

Degrees of Comparison – positive, comparative, superlative.

Determination (Definiteness/Indefiniteness) – today this category has to do with the Article but in OE there were no articles and definiteness/indefiniteness was expressed with the help of inflections of the Adjective, i.e. the inflections of the Adjective helped to determine whether a noun was definite or indefinite.

In OE there existed the weak and strong declensions of the Adjective. They will be discussed more precisely in Lecture 16.

Pronoun

Classification:

1. Personal (Noun-Pronouns (had some categories of the Noun and resembled the Noun in syntactic function)).

They had the following categories:

· Person – 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd;

· Number – Singular (Sg), Plural (Pl) + Dual (1^st, 2^nd pers. (we both, you both) when only two persons were meant);

· Gender – Masculine (M), Feminine (F), Neuter (N) – only in 3^rd person!;

· Case – Nominative (Nom), Genitive (Gen), Dative (Dat), Accusative (Acc).

2. Demonstrative (Adjective-Pronouns (had some categories of the Adjective and resembled the Adjective in syntactic function)).

They had the following categories:

· Number – Singular (Sg) and Plural (Pl);

· Gender – Masculine (M), Feminine (F), Neuter (N);

· Case – Nominative (Nom), Genitive (Gen), Dative (Dat), Accusative (Acc) +

Instrumental (Instr).

3. Interrogative – unchangeable.

4. Indefinite – unchangeable.

Personal and Demonstrative Pronouns will be discussed more precisely in Lecture 17.

Numeral

Classification:

1. Cardinal – ān (one), twēζen (two), þrēō (three) – had the categories of Gender and Case. All the other cardinal numerals were unchangeable.

2. Ordinal – were unchangeable.

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