4.The noun in oe, its grammatical categories. Consonantal stems.

Nouns in Old English had the categories of number, gender and case. Gender is actually not a grammatical category in a strict sense of the word, for every noun with all its forms belongs to only one gender (the other nominal parts of speech have gender forms); but case and number had a set of endings.

Nouns used to denote males are normally masculine - mann, feder, brodor, (man, father, brother). Naturally, those denoting females should be all feminine, - modor, sweostor (mother, sister). Yet there are curious exceptions, such words as wif (wife) is neuter (compare in Ukrainian хлоп’я, дівча). And wifman (woman) is masculine, because the second element of the compound is masculine. The gender of the other nouns is unmotivated, the same as in Ukrainian.

Still in Ukrainian nouns have endings that can indicate the gender of the noun — cmen (чол.), вікно (cep.) вода (жін.). In Old English there no such endings, and words very similar in form may be of different genders. The same form may have two different meanings distinguished by gender,

for example leod masc. "man", but leod (fem.), "people”.

There are two numbers - singular and plural, and four cases-nominative, genitive, dative and accusative. Comparing with what we have now we can see that number proved to be a stable category, relevant for rendering the meanings and expressing the true state of things in reality.

All the nouns can be classified according to the different principles. The nouns are divided into classes according to the former stem-forming suffixes, which were hardly visible even in Gothic, the language separated in time from the Old English by centuries. These stem-forming ullixes determined what inflections were taken by the nouns. Though lost in Old English they still worked in the way the case and number forms were made (we may compare it with some Russian nouns - without knowing the history of declensions, for instance, it is difficult to explain why in Russian the plural of cmoл — cmольі, but that of cmyл is not cmyльі but cmyлья, very similar nouns noчь and дочь are not so similar in the plural: ночи but дочери not дочи. In Ukrainian the nouns ім’я and хлопя look alike but the plural of the first is імена and of the second not xnonena but xлоon'яma.

Without knowing the original structure of the nouns in the language we can hardly explain the exceptions in the formations of plural of the present-day English nouns too. Why foot-feet but boot-boots?

The Strong Declension includes nouns that had had a vocalic stem-forming suffix. Former suffixes (a.o.i.u) are no longei found in Old English, moreover, even the very paradigms of these groups of nouns were already splitting (we can see considerable difference in declension of nouns of different genders within the class of nouns originally having the same stem-forming suffix.) Yet the traditional classification will look like this.

-a-stems

They may be either masculine or neuter. The difference between the two genders may be seen only in the nominative

So, we can see that Old English nouns a-stems neuter with long vowel 1111 ghl give an unchanged plural, and the noun sheep being an exception Irom the general rule of formation of the plural form goes back to the Old English period.

If there was a mutated vowel in the stem, this sound might be preserved only in the singular.

This group of nouns is of the same origin as that of Ukrainian nouns стіл, день, вікно, дно.

The Ukrainian (and Russian.) 2nd declension of nouns (masculine and neuter) originates from the same Indo-European group of nouns (Germanic short o proceeds from Indo-European a).

Examples of Old English a-stems are: masculine: earm (arm), eorl (earl), helm (helmet; protection), biscop (bishop), ham (home), heofon (heaven) etc.;

neuter: dor (door), hof (hoof), word (word), deor (wild animal), hus (house).

The nouns of this class were very numerous and were characterized by high frequency of use in Old English.

Nouns belonging to o-stems are all feminine. In the form of the nominative case monosyllabic nouns with a short root vowel of this class have ending –u (taly (tale)); if there are two and more syllables or the root vowel is long, there is no ending at all (for (journey)). Other nouns of this group are: caru (care), lufu (love), swefn (dream), scir (district) etc.

The nouns formerly having –i-suffix, now called –i-stems might belong to all the three genders, and the case endings are different for different genders – masculine and neuter have the same endings as masculine and neuter nouns of the -a-stems, and feminine noun endings repeated the endings of the -o-stems. For.ex. hyllas (hill), speru (spear), cwene (woman);

Other nouns of this group are: masculine: mere(sea), mete(food) etc; neuter: sife(sieve), hilt(hilt); feminine: hyde(hide), woruld(world) etc.

In Ukrainian the sound i caused the palatalization of the previous consonant and was lost: тесть, гість.

Nouns belonging to -u-stems may be of masculine or feminine gender: sunu(son), duru(door).

Other nouns of this group are: Masculine: wudu(wood), medu(honey), feld(field) etc. Feminine:

nosu(nose), hand(hand) etc.