The noun. Grammatical Categories. The Use of Cases

The OE noun had two grammatical or morphological categories: number and case. In addition, nouns distinguished three genders, but this distinction was not a grammatical category; it was merely a classifying feature accounting, alongside other features, for the division of nouns into morphological classes.

The category of number consisted of two members, singular and plural. As will be seen below, they were well distinguished formally in all the declensions, there being very few homonymous forms.

The noun had four cases: Nominative, Genitive, Dative and Accusative. In most declensions two, or even three, forms were homonymous, so that the formal distinction of cases was less consistent than that of numbers.

Before considering the declension of nouns, we shall briefly touch upon the meaning and use of cases. The functions of cases in OE require little explanation for the Russian student, since they are those, which ought to be expected in a language with a well-developed case system.

The Nom. can be loosely 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 characterised by a certain quality or state; could serve as a predicative and as the case of address, there being no special Vocative case, e. g.:

ðæt flod weox ðā and ābær upp ðone arc — subject, active agent ('that flood increased then and bore up the arc')

wearð ðā ælc ðing cwices ādrenct — subject, recipient of an action or state ('was then everything alive drowned')

Hē wæs swiðe spēdig man — predicative ('He was a very rich man')

Sunu mīn, hlyste minre lāre — address ('My son, listen to my teaching').

The Gen. case was primarily the case of nouns and pronouns serving as attributes to other nouns. The meanings of the Gen. were very complex and can only roughly be grouped under the headings "Subjective" and "Objective" Gen. Subjective Gen. is associated with the possessive meaning and the meaning of origin, e. g.:

Beowulf gēata 'Beowulf of the Geats'. hiora scipu "their ships"

Objective Gen. is seen in such instances as ðæs landes sceawung 'surveying of the land'; and is associated with what is termed "partitive meaning" as in sum hund scipa 'a hundred of ships', hūsa sēlest 'best of the houses'. The use of the Gen. as an object to verbs and adjectives was not infrequent, though the verbs which regularly took a Gen. object often interchanged it with other cases, cf.: hē bād ... westanwindes 'he waited for the west wind'

frige menn ne mōtan wealdan heora sylfra - 'free men could not control themselves' (also with the Acc. wealdan hie.).

Dat. was the chief case used with prepositions, e. g.: on morgenne 'in the morning' from ðæm here 'from the army', ða sende sē cyning tōðæm here and him cyðan hēt 'then sent the king to the army and ordered (him) to inform them'.

The last example illustrates another frequent use of the Dat.: an indirect personal object. The OE Dat. case could convey an instrumental meaning, indicating the means or manner of an action: hit hagolade stānum 'it hailed (with) stones', worhte AElfred cyning lytle werede geweorc 'King Alfred built defense works with a small troop'.

Alongside the Acc., Dat. could indicate the passive subject of a state expressed by impersonal verbs and some verbs of emotion:

him gelicode heora ðēawas 'he liked their customs' (lit. 'him pleased their customs').

The Acc. case was the form that indicated a relationship to a verb. Being a direct object it denoted the recipient of an action, the result of the action and other meanings:

se wulf nimð and tōdælð ðā scēap 'the wolf takes and scatters the sheep'. (Its use as an object of impersonal verbs, similar to the use of Dat., is illustrated by hine nānes ðinges ne lyste 'nothing pleased him').

It is important to note that there was considerable fluctuation in the use of cases in OE. One and the same verb could be construed with different cases without any noticeable change of meaning. The semantic functions of the Gen., Dat. and Acc. as objects commonly overlapped and required further specification by means of prepositions. The vague meaning of cases was of great consequence for the subsequent changes of the case system.