An Obituary to Noun Declensions
Jan. 28th, 2008 11:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricIt is with great regret that we reflect today upon the passing of cases from the English language. For many years they served tirelessly in the interests of grammar, indicating noun functions right throughout the Anglo-Saxon period. Not content to rest on their laurels, the cases put in some part-time work for Middle English, and can still be found declining a few solitary nouns (mouse, mice, anyone?), and defending their ground on pronouns, despite the iron rule of word order over their former territory.
While acknowledging the straightforward benefits of strict word order in day-to-day communication, we, the League of Grammar Nerds, would like to express our heartfelt thanks to grammatical cases for the flexibility they bestowed upon this language, and our great nostalgia for the lost era when it was a immeasurably less wanky to say 'I thine eyne adore', and many things more complicated.
Hence follows a brief summary of Baker's Chapter Four:
*Case indicates the function of the noun, adjective or pronoun in a clause. (Ergo, all the matching bits of the sentence must be in the same case)
*Although, what with singular and plural forms, you might expect ten forms of an Old English noun, no OE noun has more than six forms. Just to annoy you.
*Thus, it follows that there must in fact be rules to Old English word order. There are more permissible word orders than in modern English, though.
Nominative case applies to the *subject, *complement (where the verb, usually 'to be', and the second noun, describe the subject somehow), and to *forms of address (where Latin has a vocative case)
Accusative case is applied to the object of transitive verbs. Unfortunately, the accusative has started to collapse in on the nominative in Anglo-Saxon. This can be pesky at times.
Genitive case is used to 'modify a word by associating it with something', as in the modern english 's possessive form. Old English genitives can be:
*possessive, which is straightforward
*partitive- we would still use 'of' here in many cases, such as 'each OF the men'. Old English uses this construction more widely than modern english, not only for partition but also for number and quantity.
*description- ascribes a quality to something. The example he has given, þæt lamb sceal bēon hwītes hīwes is interesting- if he said "Þæt lamb sceal beon hwite", we'd have a complement in the nominative.
As if that weren't enough, some prepositions have genitive objects, and some verbs have genitive direct objects. Bah.
Dative case is used for
*the object of a preposition (but not without exceptions)
*the indirect object of a verb- someone who *recieves* the direct object. The dative can also be used where we would use the prepositional phrase "from so-and-so", as in 'to take something AWAY from so-and-so".
*sometimes the direct object. Or perhaps things which we would now express with direct objects were indirect back in the day. Either way, some verbs are tricksy like that.
*a weird sort of possessive which has a funny overlap with the indirect object construction. Baker's example is Him wæs ġeōmor sefa, 'theirs was a sad mind'. I seem to rememember reading in Antonina Harbus' book that that is a very common construction with emotions, and could also be read as '(their) minds were sad TO THEM'.
*comparison- i guess this is the ancestor of the now archaic construction 'x is like TO y'?
*instrument, means or manner: which we would now express with prepositions like 'with' and 'by'. Old English does use prepositions for this purpose, especially 'mid' and 'fram', but doesn't HAVE to.
... because if the dative isn't enough, it has the instrumental case!. Well, the remnants of the instrumental case. I don't remember EVER seeing one, but that could just be because i don't pay enough attention. According to Baker, instrumentals occur in masculine and neuter singular adjectives and pronouns, and they express:
*instrument, means, manner
*accompaniment (rarely), a sort of 'with' construction
*expressions of time, which are pretty formulaic.
I suspect case was probably a lot more fun to use than it is to untangle from a nasty sentence in translation.
While acknowledging the straightforward benefits of strict word order in day-to-day communication, we, the League of Grammar Nerds, would like to express our heartfelt thanks to grammatical cases for the flexibility they bestowed upon this language, and our great nostalgia for the lost era when it was a immeasurably less wanky to say 'I thine eyne adore', and many things more complicated.
Hence follows a brief summary of Baker's Chapter Four:
*Case indicates the function of the noun, adjective or pronoun in a clause. (Ergo, all the matching bits of the sentence must be in the same case)
*Although, what with singular and plural forms, you might expect ten forms of an Old English noun, no OE noun has more than six forms. Just to annoy you.
*Thus, it follows that there must in fact be rules to Old English word order. There are more permissible word orders than in modern English, though.
Nominative case applies to the *subject, *complement (where the verb, usually 'to be', and the second noun, describe the subject somehow), and to *forms of address (where Latin has a vocative case)
Accusative case is applied to the object of transitive verbs. Unfortunately, the accusative has started to collapse in on the nominative in Anglo-Saxon. This can be pesky at times.
Genitive case is used to 'modify a word by associating it with something', as in the modern english 's possessive form. Old English genitives can be:
*possessive, which is straightforward
*partitive- we would still use 'of' here in many cases, such as 'each OF the men'. Old English uses this construction more widely than modern english, not only for partition but also for number and quantity.
*description- ascribes a quality to something. The example he has given, þæt lamb sceal bēon hwītes hīwes is interesting- if he said "Þæt lamb sceal beon hwite", we'd have a complement in the nominative.
As if that weren't enough, some prepositions have genitive objects, and some verbs have genitive direct objects. Bah.
Dative case is used for
*the object of a preposition (but not without exceptions)
*the indirect object of a verb- someone who *recieves* the direct object. The dative can also be used where we would use the prepositional phrase "from so-and-so", as in 'to take something AWAY from so-and-so".
*sometimes the direct object. Or perhaps things which we would now express with direct objects were indirect back in the day. Either way, some verbs are tricksy like that.
*a weird sort of possessive which has a funny overlap with the indirect object construction. Baker's example is Him wæs ġeōmor sefa, 'theirs was a sad mind'. I seem to rememember reading in Antonina Harbus' book that that is a very common construction with emotions, and could also be read as '(their) minds were sad TO THEM'.
*comparison- i guess this is the ancestor of the now archaic construction 'x is like TO y'?
*instrument, means or manner: which we would now express with prepositions like 'with' and 'by'. Old English does use prepositions for this purpose, especially 'mid' and 'fram', but doesn't HAVE to.
... because if the dative isn't enough, it has the instrumental case!. Well, the remnants of the instrumental case. I don't remember EVER seeing one, but that could just be because i don't pay enough attention. According to Baker, instrumentals occur in masculine and neuter singular adjectives and pronouns, and they express:
*instrument, means, manner
*accompaniment (rarely), a sort of 'with' construction
*expressions of time, which are pretty formulaic.
I suspect case was probably a lot more fun to use than it is to untangle from a nasty sentence in translation.