5

Syllables.

10. A syllable is usually a vowel, either alone or in combination with consonants, uttered
with a single impulse of stress; but certain consonants may form syllables: oven (= ov-n), battle
(= bœt-l); (cf. also the vulgar pronunication of elm).
A syllable may be (1) weak or strong, (2) open or closed, (3) long or short.
(1) A weak syllable receives a light stress. Its vowel sound is often different from that of
the corresponding strong, or stressed, syllable. Cf. weak and strong my in “I want my lárge
hat” and “I want mý hat.”
(2) An open syllable ends in a vowel or diphthong: dē-man, to deem; ðū, thou; sca-can, to
shake; dæ-ges, by day. A closed syllable ends in one or more consonants: ðing, thing; gōd, good;
glæd, glad.
(3) A syllable is long (a) if it contains a long vowel or a long diphthong: drī-fan, to drive; lū-
can, to lock; slǣ-pan, to sleep; cēo-san; to choose, (b) if its vowel or diphthong is followed by more
than one consonant:1 cræft, strength; heard, hard; lib-ban, to live; feal-lan, to fall. Otherwise, the
syllable is short: ðe, which; be-ran, to bear; ðæt, that; gie-fan, to give.
NOTE 1.—A single consonant belongs to the following syllable: hā-lig, holy (not hāl-ig); wrī-tan, to write; fæ-
der, father.
NOTE 2.—The student will notice that the syllable may be long and the vowel short; but the vowel cannot be
long and the syllable short.
NOTE 3.—Old English short vowels, occurring in open syllables, have regularly become long in Modern
English: we-fan, to weave; e-tan, to eat; ma-cian, to make; na-cod, naked; a-can, to ache; o-fer, over. And Old English
long vowels, preceding two or more consonants, have generally been shortened: brēost,breast; hǣlð, health;
slǣpte, slept; lǣdde, led.

Accentuation.

11. The accent in Old English falls usually on the radical syllable, never on the inflectional
ending: bríngan, to bring; stā́nas, stones; bérende, bearing; ī́delnes, idleness; frḗonscipe,
friendship.
But in the case of compound nouns, adjectives, and adverbs the first member of the
compound (unless it be ge- or be-) receives the stronger stress: héofon-rīce, heaven-kingdom;
ǫ́nd-giet, intelligence; sðo-fæst, truthful; gód-cund, divine; éall-unga, entirely; blíðe-līce,blithely.
But be-haā́t, promise; ge-béd, prayer; gefḗalīc, joyous; be-sōne, immediately.
Compound verbs, however, have the stress on the radical syllable: for-gíefan, to forgive; of-
línnan, to cease; ā-cnā́wan, to know; wið-stǫ́ndan, to withstand; on-sácan, to resist.
NOTE.—The tendency of nouns to take the stress on the prefix, while verbs retain it on the root, is
exemplified in many Modern English words: préference, prefér; cóntract (noun), contráct (verb); ábstinence, abstaín;
pérfume (noun), perfúme (verb).

CHAPTER III.

INFLECTIONS.

1 
Taken separately, every syllable ending in a single consonant is long. It may be said, therefore, that all
closed syllables are long; but in the natural flow of language, the single final consonant of a syllable so often
blends with a following initial vowel, the syllable thus becoming open and short, that such syllables are not
recognized as prevailingly long. Cf. Modern English at all (= a-tall).
 6

Cases.

12. There are five cases in Old English: the nominative, the genitive, the dative, the
accusative, and the instrumental.1 Each of them, except the nominative, may be
governed by prepositions. When used without propositions, they have, in general, the
following functions:
(a) The nominative, as in Modern English, is the case of the subject of a finite verb.
(b) The genitive (the possessive case of Modern English) is the case of the possessor or
source. It may be called the of case.
(c) The dative is the case of the indirect object. It may be called the to or for case.
(d) The accusative (the objective case of Modern English) is the case of the direct object.
(e) The instrumental, which rarely differs from the dative in form, is the case of the
means or the method. It may be called the with or by case.
The following paradigm of mūð, the mouth, illustrates the several cases (the article being,
for the present, gratuitously added in the Modern English equivalents):

Singular. Plural.
N. mūð = the mouth. mūð-as = the mouths.
G. mūð-es2 = of the mouth mūð-a = of the mouths.
(= the mouth’s). (= the mouths’).
D. mūð-e = to or for the mouth. mūð-um = to or for the mouths.
A. mūð = the mouth. mūð-as = the mouths.
I. mūðe = with or by means of mūð-um = with or by means of
the mouth. the mouths.

Gender.

13. The gender of Old English nouns, unlike that of Modern English, depends partly on
meaning and partly on form, or ending. Thus mūð, mouth, is masculine; tunge, tongue,
feminine; ēage, eye, neuter.
No very comprehensive rules, therefore, can be given; but the gender of every noun should
be learned with its meaning. Gender will be indicated in the vocabularies by the different
gender forms of the definite article, sē for the masculine, sēo for the feminine, and ðæt for the
neuter: sē, mūð, sēo tunge, ðæt ēage = the mouth, the tongue, the eye.
All nouns ending in –dōm, -hād, -scipe, or –ere are masculine (cf. Modern English wisdom,
childhood, friendship, worker). Masculine, also, are nouns ending in –a.
Those ending in –nes or –ung are feminine (cf. Modern English goodness, and gerundial
forms in –ing: see-ing is believing).
Thus sē wīsdōm, wisdom; sē cildhād, childhood; sē frēondscipe, friendship; sē fiscere, fisher

1
Most grammars add a sixth case, the vocative. But it seems best to consider the vocative as only a
function of the nominative form.
2
Of course our “apostrophe and s” (= ’s) comes from the Old English genitive ending –es. The e is
preserved in Wednesday (= Old English Wōdnes dæg). But at a very early period it was thought that John’s book, for
example, was a shortened form of John his book. Thus Addison (Spectator, No. 135) declares’s a survival of his. How,
then, would he explain the s of his? And how would he dispose of Mary’s book?
 7

(man); sē hunta, hunter; sēo gelīcnes, likeness; sēo leornung, learning.

Declensions.

14. There are two great systems of declension in Old English, the Vowel Declension and the
Consonant Declension. A noun is said to belong to the Vowel Declension when the final
letter of its stem is a vowel, this vowel being then known as the stem-characteristic; but if
the stem-characteristic is a consonant, the noun belongs to the Consonant Declension.
There might have been, therefore, as many subdivisions of the Vowel Declension in Old
English as there were vowels, and as many subdivisions of the Consonant Declension as
there were consonants. All Old English nouns, however, belonging to the Vowel
Declension, ended their stems originally in a, ō, i, or u. Hence there are but four
subdivisions of the Vowel Declension: a-stems, ō-stems, i-stems, and u-stems.
The Vowel Declension is commonly called the Strong Declension, and its nouns
Strong Nouns.
NOTE.—The terms Strong and Weak were first used by Jacob Grimm (1785-1863) in the terminology of verbs,
and thence transferred to nouns and adjectives. By a Strong Verb, Grimm meant one that could form its preterit
out of its own resources; that is, without calling in the aid of an additional syllable: Modern English run, ran; find,
found; but verbs of the Weak Conjugation had to borrow, as it were, an inflectional syllable: gain, gained; help,
helped.

15. The stems of nouns belonging to the Consonant Declension ended, with but few
exceptions, in the letter n (cf. Latin homin-em, ration-em, Greek ποιμέν-a). They are
called, therefore, n-stems, the Declension itself being known as the n-Declension, or the
Weak Declension. The nouns, also, are called Weak Nouns.

16. If every Old English noun had preserved the original Germanic stem-characteristic (or
final letter of the stem), there would be no difficulty in deciding at once whether any
given noun is an a-stem, ō-stem, i-stem, u-stem, or n-stem; but these final letters had,
for the most part, either been dropped, or fused with the case-endings, long before the
period of historic Old English. It is only, therefore, by a rigid comparison of the
Germanic languages with one another, and with the other Aryan languages, that
scholars are able to reconstruct a single Germanic language, in which the original stem-
characteristics may be seen far better than in any one historic branch of the Germanic
group (§ 5, Note).
This hypothetical language, which bears the same ancestral relation to the historic
Germanic dialects that Latin bears to the Romance tongues, is known simply as Germanic
(Gmc), or as Primitive Germanic. Ability to reconstruct Germanic forms is not expected of the
students of this book, but the following table should be examined as illustrating the basis of
distinction among the several Old English declensions (O.E. = Old English, Mn.E. = Modern
English):
 8

Gmc. staina-z,
(1) a-stems O.E. stān,
Mn.E. stone.
Gmc. hallō.
(2) ō-stems O.E. heall,
Mn.E. hall.
I. Strong or Vowel Declensions Gmc. bōni-z,
(3) i-stems O.E. bēn,
Mn.E. boon.
Gmc. sunu-z,
(4) u-stems O.E. sunu,
Mn.E. son,

(1) n-stems (Weak Gmc. tungōn-iz

Declension) O.E. tung-an,
Mn.E. tongue-s.
Gmc. ƒōt-iz,
(a) O.E. fēt,
II. Consonant Declensions (2) Remnants of Mn.E. feet.
other Con- Gmc. frijōnd-iz,
sonant De- (b) O.E. frīend,
clensions Mn.E. friend-s.
Gmc. brōðr-iz,
(c) O.E. brōðor,
Mn.E. brother-s.

NOTE.—“It will be seen that if Old English ēage, eye, is said to be an n-stem, what is meant is this, that at some
former period the kernel of the world ended in –n, while, as far as the Old English language proper is concerned,
all that is implied is that the word is inflected in a certain manner.” (Jespersen, Progress in Language, § 109).
This is true of all Old English stems, whether Vowel or Consonant. The division, therefore, into a-stems, ō-
stems, etc., is made in the interests of grammar as well as of philology.

Conjugations.

17. There are, likewise, two systems of conjugation in Old English: the Strong or Old
Conjugation, and the Weak or New Conjugation.
The verbs of the Strong Conjugation (the so-called Irregular Verbs of Modern English)
number about three hundred, of which not one hundred remain in Modern English (§ 101,
Note). They form their preterit and frequently their past participle by changing the radical
vowel of the present stem. This vowel change or modification is called ablaut (pronounced)
áhp-lowt): Modern English sing, sang, sung; rise, rose, risen. As the radical vowel of the preterit
plural is often different from that of the preterit singular, there are four principal parts or tense
stems in an Old English strong verb, instead of the three of Modern English. The four principal
parts in the conjugation of a strong verb are (1) the present indicative, (2) the preterit
indicative singular, (3) the preterit indicative plural, and (4) the past participle.
Strong verbs fall into seven groups, illustrated in the following table:
 9

PRESENT PRET. SING. PRET. PLUR. PAST PARTICIPLE.

I.
Bītan to bite:
Ic bīt-e, I bite or Ic bāt, I bit. Wē bit-on, we bit. Ic hæbbe ge2-bit-en, I
shall bite.1 have bitten.
II.
Bēodan, to bid:
Ic bēod-e, I bid or Ic bēad, I bade. Wē bud-on, we bade. Ic hæbbe ge-bod-en, I
shall bid. have bidden.
III.
Bindan, to bind:
Ic bind-e, I bind or Ic bǫnd, I bound. Wē bund-on, we bound. Ic hæbbe ge-bund-en,
shall bind. I have bound.
IV.
Beran. to bear:
Ic ber-e, I bear or Ic bær, I bore. Wē bǣr-on, we bore. Ic hæbbe ge-bor-en, I
shall bear. have borne.
V.
Metan, to measure:
Ic mēt-e, I measure or Ic mæt, I Wē mǣton, we Ic hæbbe ge-met-en, I
shall measure. measured. measured. have measured.
VI.
Faran, to go:
Ic far-e, I go or shall Ic fōr, I went. Wē fōron, we went. Ic eom3ge-far-en, I
go. have (am) gone.
VII.
Feallan, to fall:
Ic faell-e, I fall or Ic fēoll, I fell. Wē fēoll-on, we fell. Ic eom3ge-feall-en, I
shall fall. have (am) fallen.

18. The verbs of the Weak Conjugation (the so-called Regular Verbs of Modern English)
form their preterit and past participle by adding to the present stem a suffix4 with d or

1 
Early West Saxon had no distinctive form for the future. The present was used both as present proper
and as future. Cf. Modern English “I go home tomorrow,” or “I am going home tomorrow” for “I shall go home
tomorrow.”
2 
The prefix ge- (Middle English y-), cognate with Latin co (con) and implying completeness of action, was
not always used. It never occurs in the past participles of compound verbs: oþ-feallan, to fall off, past participle
oþ-feallen (not oþ-gefeallen). Milton errs in prefixing it to a present participle:
“What needs my Shakespeare, for his honour’d bones,
The labour of an age in piled stones?
Or that his hallow’d reliques should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid.”
—Eptiaph on William Shakespeare.
And Shakespeare misuses it in “Y-ravished,” a preterit (Pericles III, Prologue 1. 35).
It survives in the archaic y-clept (Old English ge-clypod, called). It appears as a in aware (Old English ge-
wær), as e in enough (Old English ge-nōh), and as i in handiwork (Old English hand-ge-weorc).
3 
With intransitive verbs denoting change of condition, the Old English auxiliary is usually some form of to
be rather than to have. See § 139.
4 
The theory that loved, for example, is a fused form of love-did has been generally given up. The dental
 10

t: Modern English love, loved; sleep, slept.

The stem of the preterit plural is never different from the stem of the preterit singular;
hence these verbs have only three distinctive tense-stems, or principal parts: viz., (1) the
present indicative, (2) the preterit indicative, and (3) the past participle.
Weak verbs fall into three groups, illustrated in the following table:

PRESENT. PRETERIT. PAST PARTICIPLE.

I.
Fręmman, to
perform:
Ic fręmm-e, I Ic fręm-ede, I Ic hæbbe ge-fręm-ed, I
perform or shall performed. have performed.
perform
II.
Bodian, to proclaim:
Ic bodi-e, I proclaim Ic bod-ode, I Ic hæbbe ge-bod-od, I
or shall proclaim. proclaimed. have proclaimed.
III.
Habban, to have:
Ic hæbbe, I have or Ic hæf-de, I had. Ic hæbbe ge-hæf-d, I
shall have. have had.

19. There remain a few verbs (chiefly the Auxiliary Verbs of Modern English) that do not
belong entirely to either of the two conjugations mentioned. The most important of
them are, Ic mæg I may, Ic mihte I might; Ic cǫn I can, Ic cūðe I could; Ic mōt I must, Ic
mōste, I must; Ic sceal I shall, Ic sceolde I should; Ic eom I am, Ic wæs I was; Ic wille I will, Ic
wolde I would; Ic dō I do, Ic dȳde I did; Ic gā I go, Ic ēode I went.
All but the last four of these are known as Preterit-Present Verbs. The present tense of
each of them is in origin a preterit, in function a present. Cf. Modern English ought (= owed).

ending was doubtless an Indo-Germanic suffix, which became completely specialized only in the Teutonic
languages.