Grammatical categories. The use of cases
The OE noun had two grammatical categories: number and case. Also, nouns distinguished three genders, but gender was not a grammatical category; it was merely a classifying feature accounting for the division of nouns into morphological classes. The category of number consisted of two members: singular and plural. The noun had four cases: Nominative, Genitive, Dative and Accusative.
The Nom. can be defined as the case of the active agent, for it was the case of the subject mainly used with verbs denoting activity; the Nom. could also indicate the subject characterized by a certain quality or state; could serve as a predicative and as the case of address.
The Gen. case was primarily the case of nouns and pronouns serving as attributes to other nouns. The meanings of the Gen. case were very complex and can only be grouped under the headings Subjective and Objective Gen. Subjective Gen. is associated with the possessive meaning and the meaning of origin. Objective Gen. is associated with what is termed partitive meaning as in sum hund scipa a hundred of ships.
Dat. was the chief case used with prepositions, e.g. on morenne in the morning
The Acc. case was the form that indicated a relationship to a verb. Being the direct object it denoted the recipient of an action, the result of the action and other meanings.
Middle English retains only two distinct noun-ending patterns from the more complex system of inflection in Old English. The early Modern English words engel (angel) and name (name) demonstrate the two patterns:
| strong | weak | |||||||||
| singular | plural | singular | plural | |||||||
| nom/acc | engel | engles | name | namen | ||||||
| gen | engles* | engle(ne)** | name | namen | ||||||
| dat | engle | engle(s) | name | namen | ||||||
Some nouns of the engel type have a weak -e in the nominative/accusative singular, both otherwise the same endings. Often these are the same nouns that had an extra -e in the nominative/accusative singular of Old English. (These in turn inherited from Proto-Germanic ja -stem and i -stem nouns.)
The strong -(e)s plural form has survived into Modern English. The weak -(e)n form is now rare in the standard language, used only in oxen, children, brethren; and it is slightly less rare in some dialects, used in eyen for eyes, shoon for shoes, hosen for hose(s), kine for cows, and been for bees.
3. , .
.
OE : . , , , . : . : , , .
|
|
|
. , , ' 䳺 , . , .
, , , . "'" "" ' ' . ' , " ", Hund scipa " .
. , , morenne ""
. , ' 䳺. ' 䳿, 䳿 .
. () ' () :
/ ' Namen
* () ** Namen '
DAT (-) Namen
Engel - / , . , - / . (, - JA- ).
- () . - () , , , , , , eyen , , Hosen (), , .
