Lecture 7 changes in the nominal system in middle english and new english

a-stem, n-stem and root-stem declension, and also minor declensions: i-stem, u-stem and others. These types are preserved in Middle English, but the number of nouns belonging to the same declension in Old and Middle English varies. The n-stem declension though preserved as a type has lost many of the nouns belonging to it while the original a-stem declension grows in volumes, acquiring new words from the original a-stem, root-stem declensions, and also different groups of minor declensions and also borrowed words. For example:
Old English Middle English
a-stem singular stān singular stōn
plural stānas plural stōnes
n-stem singular nama singular name
plural namen plural namen
root-stem singular bōc (book) singular book
plural bēc plural bookes
Borrowed singular corage (courage)
plural corages

2. 
   Grammatical categories
   

There are only two grammatical categories in the declension of nouns against three in Old English: number and case, the category of gender having been lost at the beginning of the Middle English period.
Number
There are two number forms in Middle English: singular and plural. For example:
Old English Middle English
Singular fisc fish
stān stōn
nama name
Plural fiscas fishes
stānas stōnes
naman names
Case
The number of cases in Middle English is reduced as compared to Old English. There are only two cases in Middle English: Common and Genitive, the Old English Nominative, Accusative and Dative case having fused into one case – the Common case at the beginning of Middle English.
For example:
Old English Middle English
Nominative stān nama
Accusative stān naman } → Common case stōn name
Dative stāne naman
Genitive stānes naman → Genitive case stōnes names
Thus we see that the complicated noun paradigm that existed in Old English was greatly simplified in Middle English, which is reflected in the following:
+

1. 
   reduction of the number of declensions;
   
2. 
   reduction of the number of grammatical categories;
   
3. 
   reduction of the number of categorical forms within one of the remaining grammatical categories – the category of case.