Chapter 6

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-es[2] = _of the mouth_ mūð-a = _of the mouths_ (= _the mouth’s_). (= _the mouths’_).

_D._ mūð-e = _to_ or _for the mūð-um = _to_ or _for the mouths._ mouth._

_A._ mūð = _the mouth._ mūð-as = _the mouths._

_I._ mūðe = _with_ or _by means mūð-um = _with_ or _by means of the mouth._ of the mouths._

[Footnote 1: Most grammars add a sixth case, the vocative. But it seems best to consider the vocative as only a _function_ of the nominative _form_.]

[Footnote 2: Of course our “apostrophe and _s_” (= _’s_) comes from the Old English genitive ending -es. The _e_ is preserved in _Wednesday_ (= Old English #Wōdnes dæg#). But at a very early period it was thought that _John’s book_, for example, was a shortened form of _John his book_. Thus Addison (_Spectator_, No. 135) declares _’s_ a survival of _his_. How, then, would he explain the _s_ of _his_? And how would he dispose of _Mary’s book_?]

#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 wis_dom_, child_hood_, friend_ship_, work_er_). Masculine, also, are nouns ending in -a.

Those ending in #-nes# or #-ung# are feminine (_cf._ Modern English good_ness_, and gerundial forms in _-ing_: see_ing_ is believ_ing_).

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_. { { {Gmc. _hallō_, {(2) ō-stems {O.E. #heall#, I. Strong or Vowel { {Mn.E. _hall_. Declensions { { {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 {Gmc. _tungōn-iz_, { (Weak {O.E. #tung-an#, { Declension) {Mn.E. _tongue-s_. { { { {Gmc. _fōt-iz_, { {(_a_) {O.E. #fēt#, II. Consonant {(2) Remnants { {Mn.E. _feet_. Declensions { of other { { Consonant { {Gmc. _frijōnd-iz_, { Declensions {(_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 ge[4]-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 eom[5] 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 eom[5] ge-feall-en, _I have (am) fallen_.

[Footnote 3: Early West Saxon had no distinctive form for the future. The present was used both as present proper and as future. _Cf._ Modern English “I go home tomorrow,” or “I am going home tomorrow” for “I shall go home tomorrow.”]

[Footnote 4: The prefix ge- (Middle English _y-_), cognate with Latin _co_ (_con_) and implying completeness of action, was not always used. It never occurs in the past participles of compound verbs: #oþ-feallan#, _to fall off_, past participle #oþ-feallen# (not #oþ-gefeallen#). Milton errs in prefixing it to a present participle:

“What needs my Shakespeare, for his honour’d bones, The labour of an age in piled stones? Or that his hallow’d reliques should be hid Under a star-_ypointing_ pyramid.” --_Epitaph on William Shakespeare_.

And Shakespeare misuses it in “Y-ravished,” a preterit (_Pericles_ III, _Prologue_ l. 35).

It survives in the archaic _y-clept_ (Old English #ge-clypod#, called). It appears as _a_ in _aware_ (Old English #ge-wær#), as _e_ in _enough_ (Old English #ge-nōh#), and as _i_ in _handiwork_ (Old English #hand-ge-weorc#).]

[Footnote 5: With intransitive verbs denoting _change of condition_, the Old English auxiliary is usually some form of _to be_ rather than _to have_. See § 139.]

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 suffix[6] 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_.

[Footnote 6: The theory that _loved_, for example, is a fused form of _love-did_ has been generally given up. The dental ending was doubtless an Indo-Germanic suffix, which became completely specialized only in the Teutonic languages.]

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_).