Paradigms of ME Declension of Nouns in the 14th century

 

	Sg.	Pl.	Sg.	Pl.
N.	ston	stones	dor	dore, dores
G.	stones	stones	dores	dore, dores
D.	ston	stones	dor	dore, dores
Acc.	ston	stones	dor	dore, dores

 

The inflexions of nouns, as we see, were reduced to their present day status in the literary language of the 14th century. Namely, two OE inflexions remained in the language. They were extended to all types of Nouns and are still widely used in New English:

1. The inflexion of the Plural of the NE (e)s – ME es – OE as. 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.

In Late ME the ending -es was the prevalent marker of nouns in the pl. In Early NE, it extended to more nouns – to the new words of the growing English vocabulary and to many words, which built their plural in a different way in ME or employed -es as one of the variant endings. The pl. ending -es (as well as the ending -es of the Gen. Case) underwent several phonetic changes: the voicing of fricatives and the loss of unstressed vowels in final syllables.

2. The inflexion of the Possessive Case s, which is a survival of the ME Genitive case ending - es. It is from OE Genitive inflexion of Masculine and Neuter a-stem nouns. The history of the Genitive 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 Genetive 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 the 10th century writings, but its regular use instead of the inflexional Gen. does not become established until the 12th century. The use of the of-phrase grew rapidly in the 13th and 14th century. 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.

 

The Survivals of OE Plural Forms

The survivals of OE and ME plural forms of nouns are usually classified in Mod. English Grammar as exceptions (feet, deer, teeth). They are remnants of old forms, such as:

1. The NE plural forms men, feet, teeth, geese, etc., which were nouns of the root declensions in OE. They had no inflections in the plural, but a mutation.

e.g. OE mān – men

  ME man – men

  OE fo̅t – fet

  ME foot – feet

2. The Modem plural forms deer, sheep, swine were OE neuter nouns, which had no inflexions in the plural.

e.g. OE            ME

  sceap        shep

  deor         der

  swin(e)     swine

3. Some OE nouns of the weak declension kept an -en inflexion from OE an in the plural.

e.g. ox – oxen

4. This -en suffix was also added to the plural forms of some r-stem nouns: e.g. broker – brethren

5. The -en suffix was also added to the plural forms of two nouns, belonging to s-stems in OE.

 e.g. OE cild – cildru

   ME child – children

OE Dative Case of the Infinitive and the Particle to

The OE Dative of the Infinitive, which expressed direction or purpose, loses its e inflexion and its syntactical meaning. Moreover, the preposition to becomes a particle before the Infinitive, deprived of any semantic value as in New English.

Prepositional Phrases

Together with the disintegration of the inflected forms of nouns, the development of prepositional phrases takes place. Thus, the of-phrase develops and performs the function of the Genitive Case.

The Dative inflected case is supplanted by the to-phrase. The original meaning of the preposition of was from and to indicated direction.

The original meanings of the prepositions of and to are weakened and show only grammatical relations.

This process must have played the main role. First, prepositions began to be used to show more exactly the meaning of the cases and then the inflexion of the cases began to loose their meaning and the main expression of syntactical relations was transferred to prepositions.

 

NEW ENGLISH NOUN

 

By the beginning of the NE period grammatical gender and the declension of nouns were completely lost. The only inflexions that remained are as follows:

1. The inflexion of the Modem Possessive Case –‘s - which has two sources:

a) the inflexion of the OE Genitive Case Sg. Masculine and Neuter, a-stem > es

b) the possessive pronoun his, which in the 14-16th century was often placed after nouns to indicate possession.

2. The inflexions of the Plural of Nouns, of which there are several types:

a) the regular nflexion of nouns in the plural (e.g. (e)s [s, z, iz]);

b) a survival of the OE n-stems (weak declension), i.e. the OE inflexion - an-en (ME reduced), which remained in the plural of the noun (e.g. ox – oxen) and was transferred to child – children, which belonged to s-stems; and brother – brothren (r-stems);

c) the OE plural forms of the certain nouns with root-stems, which underwent mutation, but in which no inflexions remained in NE.

e.g. man-men, feet, geese, teeth, mice, lice.

d) Some OE neuter nouns without inflexions in the plural, which have kept their plural forms (e.g. deer, sheep, swine);

e) Some nouns with a final f, Ѳ which have kept the OE vocalization in the intervocalic position in the plural (e.g. lives, wives, wolves, baths, paths), but in some words vocalization disappeared (e.g. roofs, beliefs).

 

LECTURE 6