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.
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), hвm (NE home), mы? (NE mouth); examples of Neut. nouns are:
lim (NE limb), hыs (NE house), ?ing (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 [?] in the root had an interchange [?>a], since in some forms the ending contained a back vowel, e. g. Nom. sg d?ge Gen. d?ges -- Nom. and Gen. pl dagas, daga. If a noun ended in a fricative consonant, it became voiced in the intervocal position, cf. Nom. sg mu?, wulf-- [0], [f] -- and Nom. pl mu?as, wulfas -- [o], [v]. (Note that their modem descendants have retained the interchange: NE mouth -- mouths [0>?], 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.
Declension of nouns: a-stem*
Singular
M
short-stemmed
N
long-stemmed
ja-stems
wa-stems
Nom. fisc
Gen. fisces
Dat. fisce
Acc. fisc
scip
scipes
scipe
dзor
dзores
dзore
ende
endes
cnзo(w)
cnзowes
cnзowe
Plural
Nom. fiscas
Gen. fisca
Dat. fiscum
Acc. fiscas
(NE fish)
scipu
scipa
scipum
(NE ship)
dзora
dзorum
(NE deer)
endas
enda
endum
(NE) end
cnзowa cnзowum cnзo(w)
(NE knee)
*For more examples, consult “History of English” by Rastorguyeva, pp.98-99
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 dзor in the table. Consequently, long-stemmed Neuters had homonymous sg and pl forms: dзor -- dзor, likewise sceap--sceap, ?ing - ?ing, 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 cnзo; -w- is optional but appears regularly before the endings of the oblique cases (see the declension of cnзo 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, eor?e, heorte, hl?fdige (NE church, earth, heart, lady) and only a few Neut. nouns: зaga (NE eye).
Case
M N F
All genders
Norn.
sз, se ??t sзo
?a
Gen.
??s ??s ??re
?вra, ??ra
Dat.
??m, ?вm ??m, ?вm ??re
?вm, ??m
Acc.
?one ??t ?в
?в
Instr.
?y, ?on ?y, ?on ??re
??m, ?вm
Страницы: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17