An Old English Grammar

Randolph Quirk, C. Wrenn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134948819
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book is designed especially for the literary student of English, and provides a single compact grammar primarily concerned with Classical Old English, rather than the other Old English dialects. The book takes a descriptive approach and avoids assuming a knowledge of Germanic philology. The introduction provides a minimum background of knowledge and indicates the kinds of evidence on which the grammatical description is based.

II

Inflexions

General Note

24. Students who are working without a tutor and who have not previously made a start on the study of OE with the help of a primer are advised to learn by heart the paradigms and lists which are printed in bold-face type in the following paragraphs. They are further advised that their first steps in reading should be preceded or accompanied by a thorough study of selected noun, adjective, pronoun, and verb paradigms before concentrating in turn on the difficulties and exceptions presented by each of these parts of speech. Thus after learning cyning (§ 26), sciþ (§ 31), and talu (§ 36), they should proceed to the indefinite declension of adjectives (trum, § 50), and follow this with the personal pronouns (§ 63), se, þæt, sēō (§ 65), the verb fremman (§ 70) and ‘to be’ (§ 87).

Primers which are to be thoroughly recommended are Norman Davis, Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Primer (Oxford 1953) and P. S. Ardern, First Readings in Old English (Wellington, N.Z. and London 1951); more advanced linguistic students will find more detailed treatment than is possible here in J. Wright, Old English Grammar (Oxford 1925), R. Girvan, Angelsaksisch Handboek (Haarlem 1931), and K. Brunner, Altenglische Grammatik nach …Sievers (Halle, 2nd ed., 1951).

Nouns

25. OE nouns fall into three groups, masculine, neuter and feminine, according as they require one or other form of the demonstratives se, þæt, sēō, and enforce corresponding agreement on the other demonstratives, on adjectives, and on pronouns. It must be remembered that these three genders concern grammatical agreement and do not reflect any logical contrast between (animate) masculine and feminine and (inanimate) neuter; thus OE bōc ‘book’ is feminine, wīfmann ‘woman’ is masculine, and mægden ‘girl’ is neuter; but see further, § 124.

Forty-five per cent of all the nouns that the student will learn from his reading will be masculine; nearly four-fifths of these will have gen. sg. in -es and nom. acc. pl. in -as; about one fifth will have both gen. sg. and nom. acc. pl. in -an; and there will be a few very common nouns of irregular pattern.

Some thirty per cent of the nouns he meets will be feminine; five-sixths of these will have gen. sg. in -e and nom. acc. pl. in -a or -e; less than one sixth will have both gen. sg. and nom. acc. pl. in -an; again, he will find a small balance of irregulars.

Finally, twenty-five per cent of the nouns will be neuter, almost all having gen. sg. in -es and nom. acc. pl. in -u or without ending.

Regardless of gender, nouns have gen. pl. in -(r)a and dat. pl. in...