Part 1 — CHAPTER III. Inflections.

Cases.

12.

There are five cases in Old English: the nominative, the genitive, the dative, the accusative, and the instrumental.1 Each of them, except the nominative, may be governed by prepositions. When used without prepositions, they have, in general, the following functions:

(a) The nominative, as in Modern English, is the case of the subject of a finite verb.

(b) The genitive (the possessive case of Modern English) is the case of the possessor or source. It may be called the of case.

(c) The dative is the case of the indirect object. It may be called the to or for case.

(d) The accusative (the objective case of Modern English) is the case of the direct object.

(e) The instrumental, which rarely differs from the dative in form, is the case of the means or the method. It may be called the with or by case.

The following paradigm of mūð, the mouth, illustrates the several cases (the article being, for the present, gratuitously added in the Modern English equivalents):

Singular. Plural.

N. mūð = the mouth. mūð-as = the mouths.

G. mūð-es2 = of the mouth (= the mouth’s). mūð-a = of the mouths (= the mouths’).

D. mūð-e = to or for the mouth. mūð-um = to or for the mouths.

A. mūð = the mouth. mūð-as = the mouths.

I. mūðe = with or by means of the mouth. mūð-um = with or by means of the mouths.

Gender.

13.

The gender of Old English nouns, unlike that of Modern English, depends partly on meaning and partly on form, or ending. Thus mūð, mouth, is masculine; tunge, tongue, feminine; ēage, eye, neuter.

No very comprehensive rules, therefore, can be given; but the gender of every noun should be learned with its meaning. Gender will be indicated in the vocabularies by the different gender forms of the definite article, sē for the masculine, sēo for the feminine, and ðæt for the neuter: sē mūð, sēo tunge, ðæt ēage = the mouth, the tongue, the eye.

All nouns ending in -dōm, -hād, -scipe, or -ere are masculine (cf. Modern English wisdom, childhood, friendship, worker). Masculine, also, are nouns ending in -a.

Those ending in -nes or -ung are feminine (cf. Modern English goodness, and gerundial forms in -ing: seeing is believing).

Thus sē wīsdōm, wisdom; sē cildhād, childhood; sē frēondscipe, friendship; sē fiscere, fisher(man); sē hunta, hunter; sēo gelīcnes, likeness; sēo leornung, learning.

Declensions.

14.

There are two great systems of declension in Old English, the Vowel Declension and the Consonant Declension. A noun is said to belong to the Vowel Declension when the final letter of its stem is a vowel, this vowel being then known as the stem-characteristic; but if the stem-characteristic is a consonant, the noun belongs to the Consonant Declension. There might have been, therefore, as many subdivisions of the Vowel Declension in Old English as there were vowels, and as many subdivisions of the Consonant Declension as there were consonants. All Old English nouns, however, belonging to the Vowel Declension, ended their stems originally in a, ō, i, or u. Hence there are but four subdivisions of the Vowel Declension: a-stems, ō-stems, i-stems, and u-stems.

The Vowel Declension is commonly called the Strong Declension, and its nouns Strong Nouns.

Note.—The terms Strong and Weak were first used by Jacob Grimm (1785-1863) in the terminology of verbs, and thence transferred to nouns and adjectives. By a Strong Verb, Grimm meant one that could form its preterit out of its own resources; that is, without calling in the aid of an additional syllable: Modern English run, ran; find, found; but verbs of the Weak Conjugation had to borrow, as it were, an inflectional syllable: gain, gained; help, helped.

15.

The stems of nouns belonging to the Consonant Declension ended, with but few exceptions, in the letter n (cf. Latin homin-em, ration-em, Greek ποιμέν-α). They are called, therefore, n-stems, the Declension itself being known as the n-Declension, or the Weak Declension. The nouns, also, are called Weak Nouns.

16.

If every Old English noun had preserved the original Germanic stem-characteristic (or final letter of the stem), there would be no difficulty in deciding at once whether any given noun is an a-stem, ō-stem, i-stem, u-stem, or n-stem; but these final letters had, for the most part, either been dropped, or fused with the case-endings, long before the period of historic Old English. It is only, therefore, by a rigid comparison of the Germanic languages with one another, and with the other Aryan languages, that scholars are able to reconstruct a single Germanic language, in which the original stem-characteristics may be seen far better than in any one historic branch of the Germanic group (§ 5, Note).

This hypothetical language, which bears the same ancestral relation to the historic Germanic dialects that Latin bears to the Romance tongues, is known simply as Germanic (Gmc.), or as Primitive Germanic. Ability to reconstruct Germanic forms is not expected of the students of this book, but the following table should be examined as illustrating the basis of distinction among the several Old English declensions (O.E. = Old English, Mn.E. = Modern English):

Gmc. staina-z,

(1) a-stems O.E. stān,

Mn.E. stone.

I. Strong or Vowel Declensions Gmc. hallō,

(2) ō-stems O.E. heall,

Mn.E. hall.

Gmc. bōni-z,

(3) i-stems O.E. bēn,

Mn.E. boon.

Gmc. sunu-z,

(4) u-stems O.E. sunu,

Mn.E. son.

(1) n-stems (Weak Declension) Gmc. tungōn-iz,

O.E. tung-an,

Mn.E. tongue-s.

II. Consonant Declensions (2) Remnants of other Consonant Declensions Gmc. fōt-iz,

(a) O.E. fēt,

Mn.E. feet.

Gmc. frijōnd-iz,

(b) O.E. frīend,

Mn.E. friend-s.

Gmc. brōðr-iz,

(c) O.E. brōðor,

Mn.E. brother-s.

Note.—“It will be seen that if Old English ēage, eye, is said to be an n-stem, what is meant is this, that at some former period the kernel of the word ended in -n, while, as far as the Old English language proper is concerned, all that is implied is that the word is inflected in a certain manner.” (Jespersen, Progress in Language, § 109).

This is true of all Old English stems, whether Vowel or Consonant. The division, therefore, into a-stems, ō-stems, etc., is made in the interests of grammar as well as of philology.

Conjugations.

17.

There are, likewise, two systems of conjugation in Old English: the Strong or Old Conjugation, and the Weak or New Conjugation.

The verbs of the Strong Conjugation (the so-called Irregular Verbs of Modern English) number about three hundred, of which not one hundred remain in Modern English (§ 101, Note). They form their preterit and frequently their past participle by changing the radical vowel of the present stem. This vowel change or modification is called ablaut (pronounced áhp-lowt): Modern English sing, sang, sung; rise, rose, risen. As the radical vowel of the preterit plural is often different from that of the preterit singular, there are four principal parts or tense stems in an Old English strong verb, instead of the three of Modern English. The four principal parts in the conjugation of a strong verb are (1) the present indicative, (2) the preterit indicative singular, (3) the preterit indicative plural, and (4) the past participle.

Strong verbs fall into seven groups, illustrated in the following table:

Present. Pret. Sing. Pret. Plur. Past Participle.

I.

Bītan, to bite:

Ic bīt-e, I bite or shall bite.3 Ic bāt, I bit. Wē bit-on, we bit. Ic hæbbe ge4-biten, I have bitten.

II.

Bēodan, to bid:

Ic bēod-e, I bid or shall bid. Ic bēad, I bade. Wē bud-on, we bade. Ic hæbbe ge-boden, I have bidden.

III.

Bindan, to bind:

Ic bind-e, I bind or shall bind. Ic bǫnd, I bound. Wē bund-on, we bound. Ic hæbbe ge-bund-en, I have bound.

IV.

Beran, to bear:

Ic ber-e, I bear or shall bear. Ic bær, I bore. Wē bǣr-on, we bore. Ic hæbbe ge-bor-en, I have borne.

V.

Metan, to measure:

Ic met-e, I measure or shall measure. Ic mæt, I measured. Wē mǣt-on, we measured. Ic hæbbe ge-met-en, I have measured.

VI.

Faran, to go:

Ic far-e, I go or shall go. Ic fōr, I went. Wē fōr-on, we went. Ic eom5 ge-far-en, I have (am) gone.

VII.

Feallan, to fall:

Ic feall-e, I fall or shall fall. Ic fēoll, I fell. Wē fēoll-on, we fell. Ic eom5 ge-feall-en, I have (am) fallen.

18.

The verbs of the Weak Conjugation (the so-called Regular Verbs of Modern English) form their preterit and past participle by adding to the present stem a suffix6 with d or t: Modern English love, loved; sleep, slept.

The stem of the preterit plural is never different from the stem of the preterit singular; hence these verbs have only three distinctive tense-stems, or principal parts: viz., (1) the present indicative, (2) the preterit indicative, and (3) the past participle.

Weak verbs fall into three groups, illustrated in the following table:

Present. Preterit. Past Participle.

I.

Fręmman, to perform:

Ic fręmm-e, I perform or shall perform. Ic fręm-ede, I performed. Ic hæbbe ge-fręm-ed, I have performed.

II.

Bodian, to proclaim:

Ic bodi-e, I proclaim or shall proclaim. Ic bod-ode, I proclaimed. Ic hæbbe ge-bod-od, I have proclaimed.

III.

Habban, to have:

Ic hæbbe, I have or shall have. Ic hæf-de, I had. Ic hæbbe ge-hæf-d, I have had.

19.

There remain a few verbs (chiefly the Auxiliary Verbs of Modern English) that do not belong entirely to either of the two conjugations mentioned. The most important of them are, Ic mæg I may, Ic mihte I might; Ic cǫn I can, Ic cūðe I could; Ic mōt I must, Ic mōste I must; Ic sceal I shall, Ic sceolde I should; Ic eom I am, Ic wæs I was; Ic wille I will, Ic wolde I would; Ic dō I do, Ic dyde I did; Ic gā I go, Ic ēode I went.

All but the last four of these are known as Preterit-Present Verbs. The present tense of each of them is in origin a preterit, in function a present. Cf. Modern English ought (= owed).