An Introduction to Old English Edinburgh University Press

Singular
Plural
Nominative
sta¯n
sta¯nas
Accusative
sta¯n
sta¯nas
Genitive
sta¯nes
sta¯na
Dative
sta¯ne
sta¯num
Although everyone will be familiar with the concepts of singular and
plural, only someone already familiar with a language such as German
or Latin will be able to understand the remainder of what is going on
here.
The table immediately above is traditionally referred to as a para-
digm. A paradigm shows the variety of different forms which any given
word can use according to certain principles which I shall explain
shortly. But the most important point to bear in mind is that paradigms
are an essential feature of Old English, although, equally, they are un-
necessary paraphernalia in the description of present-day English (we
could say that the paradigm of stone today was: stone ~ stones but that
would just be useless clutter, not so in Old English).
Essentially, the paradigms of nouns contain information about three
obligatory linguistic features: number, which needs no explanation here,
case and gender. Both of these terms do have to be explained. Let me
start with case. As we saw in (1) and (2) above, nouns may change their
shape, i.e. they may acquire different endings, according to their function
in any particular sentence. In examples (1) and (2), for example, although
it may not yet be obvious, the subject of each sentence is in the nomina-
tive case, and the object in the accusative case. Indeed, a useful rule of
thumb is that the nominative case equates to the subject, and the accusa-
tive case to the object.
You may, at this stage, wonder why cases are necessary. The simplest
answer to this is to say they historically derived. The earlier languages
from which Old English derived had such a case system, and naturally
it was inherited by Old English. But that will not quite do. The really
interesting question is whether or not case had a significant function.
The answer to that is yes. Furthermore, it is intimately connected with
the general structure of the language. For, alongside a sentence such (1),
it was quite possible to find the type in (3), which, interestingly, can also
be found in German:
THE BASIC ELEMENTS
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(3)
T
one wyrm slo¯h se guma
Now the crucial point about (3) is that it has the same meaning as (1).
More specifically, it does not have the meaning of (2). There is, to be
sure, a somewhat different emphasis in (3) as opposed to (1): it doesn’t
really mean ‘the man slew the dragon’ but rather something like ‘it was
the dragon that the man slew’. Notice, of course, that both Old English
and present-day English can express both shades of meaning. But
whereas today we have to use quite complex syntactic structures, in Old
English the availability of case inflexions allows a much freer word order
than is possible today and gives flexibility that has now been lost. We
make up for that, of course, in not having to worry about case inflexion.
As is so often the case, it’s swings and roundabouts.
The other two cases are more complex, unfortunately, but in the case
of the genitive it does no harm to start off anachronistically and say that
the genitive is very similar to the present-day possessive in its range of
uses. This provides at least a core meaning which we can expand upon at
later stages. The dative case is also complex in make-up but again it is
possible to identify one particular meaning which can be related to a
present-day usage and to which further meanings can be added at appro-
priate moments. This usage is the Old English equivalent to the present-
day indirect object construction. Thus:
(4) Tell your people a more hateful tale
is simply a direct translation of the Old English sentence:
(5) Seg
.
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†