21. The substantive on oe

Old English nouns had grammatical gender (masculine, feminine, neuter), singular and plural number, and were also classified as "strong"(vocalic – ends in vowel) or "weak"( consonant – ends in consonant) according to the distinctness of their inflectional endings (some other classifications involve the stems that the nouns carried in Germanic and whether the noun was affected by front mutation). All of these classifications called for specific inflectional endings in each of the cases used in Old English: nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative

But In the first place, the morphological classification of OE nouns rested upon the most ancient grouping of nouns according to the stem-suffixes. Stem-suffixes could consist of vowels (vocalic stems, e. g. a-stems, i-stems), of consonants (consonantal stems, e. g. n-stems), of sound sequences, e. g. -ja-stems, -nd-stems. Some groups of nouns had no stem-forming suffix or had a "zero-suffix"; they are usually termed "root-stems" and are grouped together with consonantal stems, as their roots ended in consonants, e. g. OE man, bōc (NE man, book).

1. A-stem(m-ham, earm; n – dor, feoh)

Case Sing Plur

N stan stanas

G stanes stana

D stane stanum

Acc stan stanas

2. O-stem (f – caru, lufu)

Case Sing Plur

N talu tala

G tale tala

D tale talum

Acc tale tala

3. I-stem (m-mere, mete, n - spere, f - cwen)

4. U-stem (m – wudu, medu, f – nose, flor)

Case Sing Plur

N duru dura

G dura dura

D dura durum

Acc duru dura

5. N-stem (m – steorra, mona, n - eare, f – eorpe, heorte, sunne)

Case Sing Plur Sing Plur

N nama naman cwene cwenan

G naman namena cwenan cwenena

D naman namum cwenan cwenum

Acc naman naman cwenan cwenan

6. Root Stems (mann, fot, gos)

Case Sing Plur Sing Plur

N mann menn fot fet

G mannes manna fotes fota

D menn mannum fet fotum

Acc mann men fot fet

7. R-stem (m, f) – only terms of kinship (faeder, sweostor)

8. S-stem (n) – детеныши (lambe, cealfe, cild)

9. Nd-stem (m) – persons (decline like a-stem)

22. The substantive in me

In comparison with the Old English period, the following noun changes took place in Middle English period:

1. Leveling (a->e)

2. The category of gender was totally lost with no remnants

3. The category of number was preserved, so finally we have –es (for a majority of nouns, it became a rule), -en (ox-oxen) and a group of conservative nouns retain the vowel interchange (goose-geese)

4. The number of cases was reduced from four to two, The Nominative and Genitive

N stan stanes

G stanes stanes

23. Ne Substantive

In Early new English the noun paradigm looks very much the same as we have it today. Having lost the category of gender and much of its case forms it has the genitive case as opposite to nominative. Now it is used in the function of attribute denoting possession.

At the same time the unification of plural endings takes place, former relies of –en disappear giving way to –es. The general rule of formation of the plural of the noun is enriched by archaic forms (geese, children) – we call them grammatical archaisms.

Some words borrowed from Latin and used mainly in the scientific texts retain their Latin plurals and may be called grammatical barbarisms (datum – data? Radius- radii, formula – formulae, axis – axes)

Some of these, however, tend to comply with the general rule and forms like radiuses, formulas become quite common

The apostrophe as a sign denoting the possessive case of a noun appeared only about 1680 and it is used to mark the possessive case in plural since 1789. The nouns in the genitive case and in the plural have homonymic endings and only the context resolves ambiguity

So the changes in the nominal system were the most significant