System of Declensions

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

· stem-suffix (from IE) in OE this suffix is difficult to observe – fused with a root & the inflection;

· Gender.

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

Though the stem-suffixes merged with the root, declensions were still existent in OE and were based on the former IE stem-suffixes:

a-stem –the most numerous declension (M, N):

Traces of a-stem in Modern English:

· -es (M, Sg, Gen) à ‘s (student’s book) – Possessive Case;

· -as (M, Pl, Nom) à -(e)s (watches, books) – plural ending for the majority of nouns;

· - (N, Pl, Nom) à zero ending(deer, sheep) – homogeneous Sg and Pl.

n-stem(M, N, F) reflexes the IE style: EG: имя – имена, время – времена, племя, стремя, etc.:

Traces of n-stem in Modern English:

· -an (M, Pl, Nom) à -en (oxen, children, brethren) – irregular plural ending.

root-stem –never had stem-suffix, words consisted of just a root(M, F) (caused by i-umlaut):

Traces of n-stem in Modern English:

· root-sound interchange (M, Pl, Nom) à root-sound interchange (men, geese, mice) – irregular Plural.

15. The Simplification of the Noun Declension in English

The Decay of the Noun Declension in Early Middle English

The OE noun had the grammatical categories of Number and Case which were formally distinguished in a system of declensions (25 declensions). However, homonymous forms in the OE noun paradigms neutralized 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.

In ME the declensions disappeared due to the reduction of endings. As far as the Case endings were reduced to one or two, there remained no distinction between the Case forms of different declensions and there was no necessity any more to distinguish these declensions.

Increased variation of the noun forms in the late I0th 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 most numerous OE morphological classes of nouns were a-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 rearranged on the basis of gender.

That is to say the origin of ME plural –s comes from a-stem masc, -en (oxen, children) comes from OE n-stem masc, zero inflexion (deer, sheep) from OE neuter a-stem with long syllables, nouns of the type men, feet from OE root stem.

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 dialects differed not only in the chronology but also in the nature of changes. The Southern dialects re-arranged 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 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.(the result of i-mutation)

. 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

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

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.

Grammatical Categories of the Noun

Simplification of noun morphology affected the grammati­cal categories of the noun in different ways and to a varying degree.

The OE Gender (there were 3 genders)r, being a classifying feature (and not a grammatical category proper) disappeared together with other distinctive features of the noun declensions. The Gender in OE was not supported semantically. It was only a classifying feature for the declensions and as far as the declensions disappeared there was no necessity to preserve the Gender. It disappeared by the 11th – 12t-h -13 c.(Early ME). This category is formal.

In the 11 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.

The grammatical category of Case was preserved but under­went profound changes in Early ME. The number of cases was reduced from four (distinguished in OE) to two in Late ME due to the reduction of endings.. As far as the Case endings were reduced to one or two, there remained no distinction between the Case forms and there was no necessity any more to distinguish 4 Cases The syncretism of cases was a slow process which went on step by step.

Causes for Decay of Case System:

1. Extra linguistic factor. Influence of the Scandinavian Dialects that were grammatically simpler in comparison with OE Dialects and this influence led to the minimization of grammar.

2. Phonetic reduction of final unstressed syllables (inflections), forms of diff. cases became harmonious

3. As far as there was no distinctions between the Cases, the distinction between the Subject and the Object of a sentence was lost à fixed word order appeared (The Subject almost always took the first place and was followed by the Object).

4. The growing number and role of prepositions

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. The pl forms in ME show obvious traces of numerous OE noun declensions. Some of these traces have survived in later periods.