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Old English
Dialects Kentish Mercian Northumbrian West Saxon
Use Orthography (Runic alphabet,Latin alphabet) Grammar Phonology Phonological history
Literature Beowulf Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Cædmon's Hymn
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Thegrammar of Old English differs greatly fromModern English, predominantly being much moreinflected. As a Germanic language,Old English has amorphological system similar to that of theProto-Germanic reconstruction, retaining many of the inflections thought to have been common inProto-Indo-European and also including constructions characteristic of the Germanic daughter languages such as theumlaut.^[1]

Among living languages, Old English morphology most closely resembles that of modernIcelandic, which is among the most conservative of theGermanic languages. To a lesser extent, it resembles modernGerman.

Nouns, pronouns, adjectives and determiners were fullyinflected, with fourgrammatical cases (nominative,accusative,genitive,dative), and a vestigialinstrumental,^[2] twogrammatical numbers (singular andplural) and threegrammatical genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter). First and second-personpersonal pronouns also haddual forms for referring to groups of two people, in addition to the usual singular and plural forms.^[3]The instrumental case was somewhat rare and occurred only in the masculine and neuter singular. It was often replaced by the dative. Adjectives, pronouns and (sometimes) participles agreed with their corresponding nouns in case, number and gender. Finiteverbs agreed with their subjects in person and number.

Nouns came in numerousdeclensions (with many parallels inLatin,Ancient Greek andSanskrit). Verbs were classified into ten primary conjugation classes seven strong and three weak each with numerous subtypes, alongside several smaller conjugation groups and a few irregular verbs. The main difference from other ancient Indo-European languages, such as Latin, is that verbs could be conjugated in only two tenses (compared to the six "tenses", really tense/aspect combinations, of Latin), and the absence of asynthetic passive voice, which still existed inGothic.

Old English nouns are grouped bygrammatical gender, andinflect based oncase andnumber.

Old English retains all three genders ofProto-Indo-European: masculine, feminine, and neuter.

Each noun belongs to one of the three genders, whileadjectives anddeterminers take different forms depending on the gender of the noun they describe. The word for "the" or "that" issē with a masculine noun,sēo with a feminine noun, andþæt (which sounds like “that”) with a neuter noun. Adjectives change endings: for instance, sincehring ("ring") is masculine andcuppe ("cup") is feminine, a golden ring isgylden hring, while a golden cup isgyldenu cuppe.

In Old English the words for "he" (hē) and "she" (hēo) also mean "it".Hē refers back to masculine nouns,hēo to feminine nouns, reserving the neuter pronounhit for grammatically neuter nouns. That means even inanimate objects are frequently called "he" or "she".^[4] See the following sentence, with the masculine nounsnāw:

Compare this parallel sentence, where the neuter nounfȳr (OE equivalent of NEfire) is referred to withhit (OE equivalent of neuter singular nominative NEit):

Only a few nouns referring to people have a grammatical gender that does not match their natural gender, as in the neuter wordmæġden ("girl"). In such cases,adjectives anddeterminers follow grammatical gender, butpronouns follow natural gender:Þæt mæġdensēo þǣr stent, canst þūhīe? ("The [neuter] girlwho [feminine] is standing there, do you knowher?").^[5]

When two nouns have different genders,adjectives anddeterminers that refer to them together are inflected neuter:Hlīsa and spēd bēoþ twieċġu ("Fame [masculine] and success [feminine] are double-edged [neuter plural]").^[6]

In Old English (andIndo-European languages generally), each noun's gender derives frommorphophonology rather than directly fromsemantics. In other words, the gender of a noun derives as much or more from its structural form than any properties of thereferent.

The gender of a given Old English noun is partly predictable, based on a combination of semantic and historical morphophonological grounds. What follows are some general principles in assigning noun gender in Old English.

In general, a thing that has biological sex will have that same gender; masculinefæder ("father") and femininemōdor ("mother"), masculinecyning ("king") and femininecwēn ("queen"), masculinemunuc ("monk") and femininenunne ("nun"), etc. The three major exceptions are neuterwīf ("woman", "wife") andmæġden ("girl"), and masculinewīfmann ("woman").

Animal names that refer only to males are masculine (e.g.hana "rooster",henġest "stallion",eofor "boar",fearr "bull",ramm "ram", andbucc "buck"), and animal names that refer only to females are feminine (e.g.henn "hen",mīere "mare",sugu "sow",cū "cow",eowu "ewe", anddā "doe"). The only exception isdrān ("drone"), which is feminine even though it refers tomale bees.

General names for animals (of unspecified sex) could be of any gender: for example,ūr ("aurochs") is masculine,fifalde ("butterfly") is feminine, andswīn ("pig") is neuter.

If a noun could refer to both malesand females, it was usually masculine. Hencefrēond ("friend") andfēond ("enemy") were masculine, along with many other examples such aslufiend ("lover"),bæcere ("baker"),hālga ("saint"),sċop ("poet"),cuma ("guest"),mǣġ ("relative"),cristen ("Christian"),hǣðen ("heathen"),āngenġa ("loner"),selfǣta ("cannibal"),hlēapere ("dancer"), andsangere ("singer"). The main exceptions are the two words for "child",ċild andbearn, which are both neuter.

It is not easy to predict the gender of a noun that refers to a thing without biological sex, such as neuterseax ("knife"), femininegafol ("fork"), and masculinecucler ("spoon").^[7] The gender of nouns with inanimate referents is usually determined by historical morphophonological principles:

• Nouns ending in-a are almost all masculine. The exceptions are a small number of learned borrowings from Latin, such asItalia ("Italy") anddiscipula ("[female] disciple").
• Compound words always take the gender of the last part of the compound. That is whywīfmann ("woman") is masculine, even though it means "woman": it is a compound ofwīf ("woman") plus the masculine nounmann ("person").
• Similarly, if a noun ends in a suffix, the suffix determines its gender. Nouns ending in the suffixes-oþ,-dōm,-end,-els,-uc,-ling,-ere,-hād, and-sċipe are all masculine, nouns ending in-ung,-þu,-nes,-estre,-rǣden, and-wist are all feminine, and nouns ending in-lāc,-et,-ærn, and-ċen are all neuter.Mæġden ("girl") is neuter because it ends in the neuterdiminutive suffix-en.
• Letters of the alphabet are all masculine.
• Metals are all neuter.
• Adjectives used as nouns, such as colors, are neuter unless they refer to people. When theydo refer to people, they are masculine by default unless the person is known to be a female, in which case they duly follow the feminine inflections:fremde ("stranger"),fremdu ("[female] stranger");dēadlīċ ("mortal"),dēadlīcu ("[female] mortal").
• Verbs are neuter when used as nouns.

Since gender is noun-specific and ultimately a feature ofmorphophonology rather thansemantics (word-meaning), it goes without saying that any "thing" (referent) might be referred to as a different name (noun) of a different gender: a "mountain" could be denoted by the masculinebeorg or femininedūn, a "star" could be denoted by masculinesteorra or neutertungol, a "window" could be denoted by neuterēagþȳrel or feminineēagduru, a "tree" could be denoted by neutertrēo ("tree") or masculinebēam, a "shield wall" denoted by masculinesċieldweall or femininesċieldburg.

Old English has two nouns for many types of people: a general term which can refer to both males and females, like Modern English "waiter", and a separate term which refers only to females, like Modern English "waitress". Several different suffixes are used to specify females:

• -en is added to miscellaneous words such asgod ("god") →gyden ("goddess"),ielf ("elf") →ielfen ("female elf"),þeġn ("servant") →þiġnen ("female servant"),þēow ("slave") →þiewen ("female slave"), andnēahġebūr ("neighbor") →nēahġebȳren ("female neighbor").
• -estre is the female equivalent of-ere and-end, both meaning "-er". It is used on many nouns such assangere ("singer") →sangestre ("female singer"),lufiend ("lover") →lufestre ("female lover"),bæcere ("baker") →bæcestre,tæppere ("bartender") →tæppestre, andforspennend ("pimp") →forspennestre.
• -e is the female equivalent of-a, which was sometimes a regular noun ending with no meaning and sometimes yet another suffix meaning "-er". Examples includewyrhta ("worker") →wyrhte andforegenġa ("predecessor") →foregenġe.

Sometimes the female equivalent is a totally separate word, as inlārēow ("teacher") ~lǣrestre ("female teacher", as if the general term were*lǣrere),lǣċe ("doctor") ~lācnestre ("female doctor", as if the general term were*lācnere), andhlāford ("master", literally "bread guardian") ~hlǣfdiġe ("mistress", literally "bread kneader").

As in several other oldGermanic languages, Old English declensions include fivecases:nominative,accusative,dative,genitive, andinstrumental.^[8]

• Nominative: the subject of a sentence, which carries out the action.Hē lufode hīe ("he loved her"),þæt mæġden rann ("the girl ran"). Words on the other side of "to be" also take this case: in the phrasewyrd is eall ("destiny is all"), both "destiny" and "all" are nominative.
• Accusative: thedirect object, that which is acted upon.Hē lufodehīe ("he lovedher"),sē ridda ācwealdeþone dracan ("the knight slewthe dragon").
• Genitive: the possessor of something.Ġesāwe þūþæs hundes bān? ("Have you seenthe dog's bone?"). The genitive in Old English corresponds to 's in present-day English and to "of" in present-day English. Hence, "The fall of Rome" wasRōme hryre, literally "Rome's fall", and "the god of thunder" wasþunres god, literally "thunder's god". Old English has the preposition "of" but the genitive was the main way of indicating possession.^[9] The genitive case could be usedpartitively, to signify that something was composed of something else: "a group of people" wasmanna hēap (literally "people's group"), "three of us" wasūre þrī ("our three"), and "a cup of water" waswætres cuppe ("water's cup").
• Dative: theindirect object.Iċ sealdehire þone beall ("I gaveher the ball").
• Instrumental: something that is being used.Hwæl mē meahte midāne sleġe besenċan oþþe ofslēan ("A whale could sink or kill me withone blow"). This case can be used without prepositions when the meaning is clear, as inōðre naman, which means "[by] another name":Ūhtred sē Godlēasa æt Bebban byrġ,ōðre naman sē Deneslaga ("Uhtred the Godless of Bebbanburg,also known as the Daneslayer"). During the Old English period, the instrumental was falling out of use, having mostly merged with the dative. It was distinguished from the dative only in the masculine and neuter singular of strong adjectives anddemonstratives, and even then the dative was often used instead.

Not all nouns take the same endings toinflect fornumber andcase. Instead, each noun belongs to one of eight different classes, and each class has a different set of endings (sometimes several, depending on subtype).

InProto-Germanic, one could tell which class a noun was by its ending in the nominative singular. But by the Old English period, most of these endings had disappeared or merged with other endings, so this was no longer possible.

A-stem nouns are by far the largest class, totaling 60% of all nouns.^[10] Some are masculine, some are neuter. They are called a-stems because in Proto-Germanic times, they ended in-az (if masculine) or-ą (if neuter). However, in Old English, both these endings have vanished, and masculines only differ from neuters in the nominative/accusative plural.

Masculine a-stems are almost all inflected the same, as inhund ("dog") below. The neuter a-stems, however, are split in two: some of them end in-u in the nominative/accusative plural, while others have no ending there at all. This was caused by a sound change calledhigh vowelapocope, which occurred in the prehistory of Old English.Short-i and-udisappeared at the ends of words after aheavy syllable—that is, a syllable containing along vowel orlongdiphthong or ending in two or more consonants—and after two light syllables.^[11] Nouns which kept short -i/-u are called light, while nouns which lost them are called heavy.

The a-stems come in three separate declensions: one for masculine nouns, one for "heavy" neuter nouns, and one for "light" neuter nouns. They are exemplified byhund ("dog"),sċip ("boat"), andhūs ("house"):

The ō-stems are by far the largest class after a-stems. They include the vast majority of feminine nouns, and zero nouns withNull morphemes of any other gender.

They are called ō-stems because they ended in-ō in Proto-Germanic, but in Old English that ending has changed to-u or vanished. In the nominative singular, "light" ō-stems end in-u while "heavy" ō-stems have no ending, just like neuter a-stems in the nominative/accusative plural.

N-stems can be any gender, though there are only a few neuters:ēage ("eye"),ēare ("ear"),wange ("cheek"), and compounds ending in them, such asþunwange ("temple [of the head]"). N-stems are also called "weak nouns", because they are "weakly" inflected; i.e., most of their inflections have the same ending,-an. All other nouns are called "strong nouns".

Masculine and feminine n-stems are inflected the same except in the nominative singular, where masculines end in-a, feminines in-e:

The few neuter n-stems are declined the same as feminines, except they also have-e in the accusative singular:

The i-stems are so called because they ended in-iz in Proto-Germanic, but in Old English that ending has either become-e (in light i-stems) or vanished (in heavy i-stems). These nouns come in every gender, though neuter i-stems are rare.

By the earliest Old English prose, this class has already largely merged with other classes: masculine and neuter i-stems have taken on the same declension as a-stems, and feminine i-stems havealmost the same declension as ō-stems. So, they are really only called i-stems because of their history, not because of how they inflect.

Their only distinct inflection survives in the accusative singular of feminine heavy i-stems, which fluctuates between-e (the ō-stem ending) and no ending (the inherited ending):

The exceptions are a few nouns thatonly come in the plural, namelylēode ("people") and various names of nationalities, such asEngle ("the English") andDene ("the Danes"). These nouns kept the nominative/accusative plural-e that they inherited through regular sound change.

Theu-stems are all masculine or feminine. They are all declined the same way, regardless of gender:

There are few pure u-stem nouns, but some are very common:duru ("door"),medu ("mead"),wudu ("wood"). Most historical u-stems have been transferred over to the a-stems. Some nouns follow the a-stem inflection overall, but have a few leftover u-stem forms in their inflection. These forms may exist alongside regular a-stem forms:

• feld: dative singularfelda
• ford: dative singularforda
• winter: dative singularwintra
• æppel: nominative/accusative pluralæppla

Root nouns are a small class of nouns which, inProto-Germanic, had ended in a consonant without any intervening vowel.

These nouns undergoi-umlaut in the dative singular and the nominative/accusative plural. This is the source of nouns in Modern English which form their plural by changing a vowel, as in man ~ men, foot ~ feet, tooth ~ teeth, mouse ~ mice, goose ~ geese, and louse ~ lice. In Old English, there were many more such words, includingbōc ("book"),cū ("cow"),gāt ("goat"),āc ("oak"),hnutu ("nut"),burg ("city"), andsulh ("plow").

All root nouns are either masculine or feminine. Masculine root nouns are all heavy, but among feminines there is a contrast between light nouns and heavy nouns: light nouns end in-e where they have umlaut of the root vowel, while heavy nouns have no ending. The typical declension is this:

Nd-stems are nouns formed with the suffix-end, which createsagent nouns from verbs:āgan ("to own") →āgend ("owner"). All are masculine.

Single-syllable nd-stems are only possible when the stem ends in a vowel, which is rare; hence, only three are attested:frēond ("friend") ←frēoġan ("to love"),fēond ("enemy") ←fēoġan ("to hate"), andtēond ("accuser") ←tēon ("to accuse"). They are declined just like masculine root nouns:

The multi-syllable nd-stems are declined very differently. Their stem vowel never undergoesi-umlaut, and in fact, they are inflected just like a-stems in the singular. Moreover, their plural forms are truly unique: the genitive plural always ends in-ra, which is normally used for adjectives, and the nominative/accusative plural varies between no ending, the adjective ending-e, and the a-stem ending-as. The adjectival endings are a relic of the nd-stems' origin aspresent participles.

Ther-stems comprise only five nouns:fæder,mōdor,brōþor,sweostor, anddohtor.

Brōþor,mōdor, anddohtor are all inflected the same, with i-umlaut in the dative singular.Sweostor is inflected the same except without i-umlaut.Fæder is indeclinable in the singular likesweostor, but has taken its nominative/accusative plural from the a-stems. In addition,brōþor andsweostor often take the prefixġe- in the plural, while the rest never do.

Z-stems are the name given to four neuter nouns which inflect like light neuter a-stems, except the plural endings begin with-r-. These nouns areċild ("child"),ǣġ ("egg"),lamb ("lamb"), andċealf ("calf").

The above only mentions the most common ways each noun class is inflected. There are many variations even within classes, some of which include:

• High vowelapocope (loss ofshort-i and-u at the end of a word) is not entirely consistent. At first, these sounds were lost after a heavy syllable or two light syllables. But then, at some point before the written period, speakers started re-adding-u to the plurals of some neuter nouns where it had originally vanished. These nouns have two competing plurals, one with-u and one without it. So, "dreams" is eitherswefn orswefnu, "sails" is eitherseġl or seġlu, and "waters" is eitherwæter orwætru, among many other examples. Note that this mainly happened to a very specific set of nouns: those whose inflectional endings are preceded by a consonant plus /n/, /l/, or /r/.
• Some nouns have-u after a heavy syllable because, when high vowel apocope occurred, they had an intervening light syllable which later disappeared. Examples include nouns with the suffix-þu such asstrengðu ("strength") andiermðu ("poverty"), z-stem plurals such asǣġru ("eggs") andċealfru ("calves"), and the a-stem pluralshēafdu ("heads") anddēoflu ("demons"). Also the plurals of all neuter a-stems that end in-e:wīte ("punishment"), pl.wītu;ǣrende ("message"), pl.ǣrendu.
• Some ō-stems unexpectedly end in-u in the singular, such asþīestru ("darkness"),hǣtu ("heat"),meniġu ("crowd"),ieldu ("age"), andbieldu ("bravery"). These nouns once belonged to a separate class called the īn-stems, which all ended in-ī. Then they merged with the ō-stems when this ending was replaced with-u—well after high vowel apocope had gone to completion, so the-u remained.
• Many nouns which end with an unstressed vowel plus a single consonantlose the unstressed vowel when they take inflectional endings:gristel ("cartilage"),gristles ("of cartilage"). However, it is impossible to predict which nouns this happens to without knowing the history of the word. For example,Dryhten ("the Lord") loses its unstressed-e- when inflected, butnīeten ("animal") does not;ēðel ("homeland") does, butcrypel ("cripple") does not.^[12]
• If an a-stem ends in one consonant and its stem vowel is short /æ/, it becomes /ɑ/ in the plural. "Day" isdæġ but "days" isdagas, "bath" isbæþ but "baths" isbaðu. Other examples includefæt ("container"),sċræf ("cave"),stæf ("staff"),pæþ ("path"),hwæl ("whale"), andblæd ("blade").
• A-stems which end inġ,ċ, orsċ after a vowel have hardg,c, orsc in the plural:fisċ /fiʃ/ ("fish"), pl.fiscas /ˈfiskɑs/. Other examples includedæġ ("day"),weġ ("way"),twiġ ("twig"),disċ ("plate"),dīċ ("ditch"),līċ ("corpse"), andwīċ ("village").
• If a noun ends inh, theh disappears before inflectional endings. Thislengthens the precedingvowel ordiphthong (if it is short). Unless theh comes right after a consonant, it alsodeletes the following vowel, except in the genitive plural, where an-n- has been inserted to prevent this from happening. All this is exemplified by two masculine a-stems,sċōh andfearh:

• If an a-stem ends in-u, theu is replaced withw before inflectional endings:searu ("machine"), dat. sg.searwe.
• Something similar happens with a subgroup of ō-stem nouns called the wō-stems. These nouns once ended in-wu, before a sound change occurred which caused thew to disappear in the nominative singular; subsequently some also lost the-u by high vowel apocope. By the written period, they are indistinguishable from other ō-stems in the nominative singular, except they keep thew before inflectional endings. These nouns includesċeadu ("shadow/shade"),sinu ("sinew"),mǣd ("meadow"), andlǣs ("pasture").

Adjectivestake different endings depending on thecase,gender, andnumber of the noun they describe. The adjectivecwic ("alive"), for example, comes in eleven different forms:cwic,cwicu,cwicne,cwice,cwices,cwicre,cwicum,cwica,cwicra,cwican, andcwicena.

There are two separate sets of inflections, traditionally called the "strong declension" and the "weak declension". Together, both declensions contain many different inflections, though just ten or eleven unique forms typically cover all of them. The usual endings are exhibited bycwic ("alive") among many other adjectives:

In general, the weak declension is used after the words for "the/that" and "this" andpossessive determiners such as "my", "your", and "his", while the strong declension is used the rest of the time. Hence "a live scorpion" iscwic þrōwend, while "the live scorpion" issē cwica þrōwend. Further details:

• The weak declension is also used indirect address, as inĒalāfæġere mæġden ("Heybeautiful girl").
• Ordinal numbers andcomparative adjectives only take the weak declension, even in situations that would otherwise call for the strong declension. The most important exception isōðer ("other/second"), which is always strong despite being both an ordinal number and a comparative. Of the four words for "first",forma andǣrra are always weak, butǣrest andfyrest can be either strong or weak just like most other adjectives.
• The adjectiveāgen ("own") is usually strong in the phrase "one's own":Hēo forlēt ōðre dæġe on hireāgnum horse ("She left the next day on herown horse").

Adjectives once came in many different classes just like nouns, but by Old English times, all adjectives have basically the same endings ascwic above. However, there are still a good number of differences and irregularities:

• As with nouns, there are "light" adjectives which retain the inflectional ending-u (which occurs in the feminine nominative singular and neuter nominative/accusative plural), and "heavy" adjectives which have lost it. Originally-u disappeared after a heavy syllable or two light syllables, but speakers have re-added it to some adjectives where it had been lost. Namely, those with the suffixes-iġ or-līċ:bisigu sweord ("busy swords" [nom. pl. neut.]),broðorlīcu lufu ("brotherly love" [nom. sg. fem.]).^[13][12]
• Some adjectives have-u after a heavy syllable because, when high vowel apocope occurred, they had an intervening light syllable which later disappeared. Examples includelȳtel ("little"), nom. sg. fem./nom-acc. pl. neutlȳtlu;ōðer ("other"), nom. sg. fem./nom-acc. pl. neutōðru; andēower ("your"), nom. sg. fem./nom-acc. pl. neut.ēowru.
• Adjectives ending in-e all lose the-e before inflectional endings:blīðe ("happy"), nom. sg. masc.blīðne. They also all retain-u:blīðu ċildru ("happy children").^[14]
• If an adjective ends in shortæ plus a single consonant, theæ becomesa before endings beginning with a vowel:glæd ("glad"), nom. pl. masc.glade.
• If an adjective ends inh, theh disappears before inflectional endings. Thislengthens the precedingvowel ordiphthong:þweorh ("crooked"),þwēorre gen. sg. fem. Also, if theh comes right after a vowel, any immediately following vowel disappears:hēah ("high"), acc. sg. masc.hēane, dat. sg. masc.hēam, nom. pl. masc.hēa.
• If an adjective ends in-u, it changes too before an inflectional ending beginning with a consonant:ġearu ("ready"), acc. sg. masc.ġearone, dat. sg. fem.ġearore. Before a vowel, it changes tow: nom. pl. masc.ġearwe.
• Most adjectives ending inġ,ċ, orsċ have hardg,c, orsc before an ending beginning with aback vowel (/ɑ/, /o/, /u/).Ġesċādlīċ ("rational"), nom. pl. fem.ġesċādlīca;mennisċ ("human"), dat. sg. neut.menniscum.
• Many adjectives which end in an unstressed vowel plus a single consonantlose the unstressed vowel before endings beginning with vowels:lȳtel ("little"), nom. pl. fem.lȳtla.

Old English never uses the equivalents of "more" and "most" to formcomparative orsuperlative adjectives. Instead, the equivalents of "-er" and "-est" are used (-ra and-ost, for some words-est). "More beautiful" isfæġerra, literally "beautiful-er", and "most beautiful" isfæġerost, literally "beautiful-est".^[a] Other examples includebeorht ("bright") →beorhtra ("brighter"),beorhtost ("brightest");bearnēacen ("pregnant") →bearnēacenra ("more pregnant"),bearnēacnost ("most pregnant"); andcnihtlīċ ("boyish") →cnihtlīcra ("more boyish"),cnihtlīcost ("most boyish"). The only exception is that "more" (mā orswīðor) and "most" (mǣst orswīðost) were sometimes used withparticiples:swīðor ġelufod ("more loved"),swīðost ġelufod ("most loved").

A handful of words form the comparative and superlative withi-umlaut, namelyeald ("old") →ieldra,ieldest;ġeong ("young") →ġingra,ġinġest;strang ("strong") →strengra,strenġest;lang ("long") →lengra,lenġest;sċort ("short") →sċyrtra,sċyrtest; andhēah ("high") →hīera,hīehst.

A few morebecome totally different words:gōd ("good") →betera,betst;yfel ("bad") →wiersa,wierrest;miċel ("much/a lot/big") →māra ("more/bigger"),mǣst ("most/biggest");lȳtel ("little") →lǣssa ("less/smaller"),lǣsest ("least/smallest").

Old English has noindefinite article.^[15] Instead, a noun is most often used by itself:

Thedefinite article issē, which doubles as the word for "that". It comes in eleven different forms depending oncase,gender, andnumber:sē,sēo,þæt,þone,þā,þæs,þǣre,þām,þon,þȳ, andþāra.

The word "the" was used very much like in Modern English. The main difference is that it was used somewhat more sparingly, due to numerous groups of nouns which usually went without it. These include:^[16][17][18]

• All river names.OnTemese flēat ān sċip ("A boat was floating onthe Thames").
• Names of peoples. Ex:Seaxan ("the Saxons"),Winedas ("the Slavs"),Siġelhearwan ("the Ethiopians"),Indēas ("the Indians"). Names of peoples also frequently stand for the place they are from: for example, the word forEssex wasĒastseaxan ("the East Saxons"), and "the prince of Denmark" wasDena æðeling, literally "prince of the Danes".
• A few nouns denoting types of locations, namelysǣ ("the sea"),wudu ("the woods"), andeorðe ("the ground").Þū fēolle oneorðan and slōge þīn hēafod ("You fell onthe ground and hit your head"). Also "the world", whether expressed withweorold ormiddanġeard. Note that "sea" is still sometimes used without "the" in Modern English, in fossilized phrases like "at sea" and "out to sea".
• A couple of abstract concepts, namelysōþ ("the truth") andǣ ("the law").
• Many divisions of time. Namely, the words for the morning, the evening, the four seasons, the past, the present, and the future.Iċ ārās on lætnemorgen and ēode niðer ("I got up late inthe morning and went downstairs"). Note that this is similar to Modern English "I go outat night".
• Dryhten ("the Lord").Dēofol ("the Devil") often occurs with "the" and often without it.
• Thecardinal directions:norþ,sūþ,ēast, andwest. Also theintercardinal directions:norðēast,sūðēast,sūðwest, andnorðwest.
• A few set phrases, includingealle hwīle ("the whole time", literally "all/whole while"),be weġe ("on the way", lit. "by way"), andealne weġ ("all the way" or "always", lit. "all way"). Alsoforma sīþ ("the first time"),ōðer sīþ ("the second time"), and so on.

Note that those words still occur with "the" when they refer to a specific iteration, as in "the future that I want", "the woods behind my house", or "the law they just passed".

There is also thedistal demonstrativeġeon, the source of Modern English "yon". It means "that over there" and refers to things far away.Ġeon is declined like a regular adjective, that is likecwic above.

Hwā ("who") andhwæt ("what") followsocio-cultural gender,^[b] notgrammatical gender: as in Modern English,hwā is used with people,hwæt with things. However, that distinction only matters in thenominative andaccusative cases, because in every other case they are identical:

Hwelċ ("which" or "what kind of") is inflected like an adjective. Same withhwæðer, which also means "which" but is only used between two alternatives:

The first and second-person pronouns are the same for all genders. They also have specialdual forms, which are only used for groups of two things, as in "we both" and "you two". The dual forms are common, but the ordinary plural forms can always be used instead when the meaning is clear.

Whilst most Old English texts have the accusative and dative pronouns in the first and second person merged, some texts, most notably those of Anglian dialects and in poetry, preserve the distinction.mec andþec, the first and second person singular respectively, are descended from the original Proto-Germanic stressed pronouns, meanwhile for the dual and plural, whose accusative and dative forms had merged through regular sound change by the time of Proto-West Germanic, new forms were coined by suffixing-iċ or-it to the dative forms. This gaveūsiċ andēowiċ for the first and second plural, anduncit andincit for the first and second dual.

Many of the forms above bear a strong resemblance to the Modern English words they eventually became. For instance, in the genitive case,ēower became "your",ūre became "our", andmīn became "my". However, in stressed positions, the plural third-person personal pronouns were all replaced withOld Norse forms during theMiddle English period, yielding "they", "them" and "their". (The Old English dative pronoun is retained as unstressed 'em.)

Old English verbs are divided into two groups:strong verbs andweak verbs. Strong verbs form the past tense by changing avowel, while weak verbs add an ending.

Strong verbs use aGermanic form ofconjugation known asablaut. They form the past tense by changing their stem vowel. These verbs still exist in modern English;sing, sang, sung is a strong verb, as areswim, swam, swum andbreak, broke, broken. In modern English, strong verbs are rare, and they are mostly categorised as irregular verbs.

In Old English, meanwhile, strong verbs were much more common and were not considered irregular. The system of strong verbs was more coherent, including seven major classes, each with its own pattern of stem changes.

Over time the system of strong verbs became less functional: new verbs were coined or borrowed as weak verbs, meaning strong verbs became rarer, and sound changes made their patterns harder to distinguish. Many verbs that in Old English were strong verbs, such as:abide, bake, ban, bark, bow, braid, burst, carve, chew, climb, creep, delve, drag, fare, fart, flee, float, flow, gnaw, grip, help, laugh, leap, let, load, lock, melt, milk, mow, quell, read, row, shine, shove, slay, sleep, sneeze, spurn, starve, step, suck, swallow, sweep, swell, thresh, walk, wash, weep, wreak, andyield have become weak verbs in modern English. This tendency for strong verbs to become weak dates as far back as Old English:sleep (slǣpan) andread (rǣdan) both shifted from strong to weak in the Old English period.

Learning strong verbs is often a challenge for students of Old English, though modern English speakers may see connections between the old verb classes and their modern forms.

The classes had the following distinguishing features to their infinitive stems, each corresponding to particular stem changes within their strong-conjugating paradigms:

The firstpast stem is used in the past, for thefirst and third-personsingular. The second past stem is used for second-person singular, and all persons in theplural (as well as the preteritesubjunctive). Strong verbs also exhibiti-mutation of the stem in the second and third-person singular in thepresent tense.

The third class went through many sound changes, becoming barely recognisable as a single class. The first was a process called'breaking'. Before⟨h⟩, and⟨r⟩ + another consonant,⟨æ⟩ turned into⟨ea⟩, and⟨e⟩ to⟨eo⟩. Also, before⟨l⟩ + another consonant, the same happened to⟨æ⟩, but⟨e⟩ remained unchanged (except before the combination⟨lh⟩).

A second sound change turned⟨e⟩ to⟨i⟩,⟨æ⟩ to⟨a⟩, and⟨o⟩ to⟨u⟩ before nasals.

Altogether, this split the third class into four sub-classes:

Regular strong verbs were all conjugated roughly the same, with the main differences being in the stem vowel. Thusstelan "to steal" represents the strong verb conjugation paradigm.

Weak verbs form the past tense by adding endings with-d- in them (sometimes-t-) to the stem. In Modern English, these endings have merged as-ed, forming the past tense for most verbs, such aslove, loved andlook, looked.

Weak verbs already make up the vast majority of verbs in Old English. There are two major types: class I and class II. A class III also existed, but contained only four verbs.

By the Old English period, new class I weak verbs had stopped being produced, but so many had been coined inProto-Germanic that they were still by far the most common kind of verb in Old English.^[19] These verbs are often recognizable because they featurei-umlaut of the word they were derived from, as indēman ("to judge") fromdōm ("judgment"),blǣċan ("to bleach") fromblāc ("pale"),tellan ("to count") fromtæl ("number"), andrȳman ("to make room") fromrūm ("room"). They are also the source of alterations in Modern English such asfeed ~food,fill ~full, andbreed ~brood.

Class I weak verbs are not allconjugated the same. Their exact endings depend on a complex combination of factors, mostly involving thelength of the stem vowel and which consonants the stem ends in, and sometimes also the history of the word. But the largest number are conjugated the same asdǣlan ("to share"):

Many verbs ending in adouble consonant are conjugated liketemman ("to tame"), with the same endings and the same alternation between single and double consonants:

Class I weak verbs that end in-rian are conjugated likestyrian ("to move"):

Class II weak verbs are easily recognized by the fact that nearly all of them end in-ian:hopian ("to hope"),wincian ("to wink"),wandrian ("to wander").

By the Old English period, this was the onlyproductive verb class left. Newly created verbs were almost automatically weak class II.^[20]

Unlike weak class I, they never causei-umlaut, so their stems are usually identical to the stem of the word they were derived from:lufu ("love") →lufian ("to love"),mynet ("coin") →mynetian ("to coin"),hwelp ("puppy") →hwelpian ("[of animals] to give birth").

Their conjugation is also much simpler than all other verb classes. Almost all weak class II verbs have precisely the same endings, completely unaffected by the makeup of the stem or the history of the word. A typical example islufian ("to love"):

Though it was once much larger, containing many verbs which later became class II, only four verbs still belonged to this group by the period of written texts:habban ("to have"),libban ("to live")seċġan ("to say"), andhyċġan "to think". Each of these verbs is distinctly irregular, though they share some commonalities.

The preterite-presents are verbs whose present tenses look like the past tenses of strong verbs. This resemblance is not coincidental, since they descend fromProto-Indo-European stative verbs, which normally developed into the past tense of Germanic languages. The preterite-present verbs are an exception to this development, remaining as independent verbs. For example, the first-person present ofwitan ("to know") originally meant "I have seen", referring to the state of having seen, and by implication "I know". At some point well before Old English, these verbs were given their own past tenses by adding weak past endings, but without an intervening vowel. This lack of an intervening vowel then led to alternations in the consonants, and sometimes vowels as well.

There are only a dozen preterite-presents, but most are among the most frequent verbs in the language. They aremagan ("can"),sċulan ("should/must/to owe"),mōtan ("may"),þurfan ("to need"),witan ("to know"),cunnan ("to know/know how"),ġemunan ("to remember"),durran ("to dare"),āgan ("to own"),dugan ("to be useful"),ġenugan ("to suffice"), andunnan ("to grant").

In spite of heavy irregularities, these can be grouped into four groups of similarly conjugated verbs:

1. Āgan, durran, mōtan, and witan
2. Cunnan, ġemunan (outside the past tense), and unnan
3. Dugan, magan, and ġenugan
4. Sċulan and þurfan

Additionally, there is a further group of four verbs which are anomalous: "want", "do", "go" and "be". These four have their own conjugation schemes which differ significantly from all the other classes of verb. This is not especially unusual: "want", "do", "go", and "be" are the most commonly used verbs in the language, and are very important to the meaning of the sentences in which they are used. Idiosyncratic patterns of inflection are much more common with important items of vocabulary than with rarely used ones.

Dōn 'to do' andgān 'to go' are conjugated alike;willan 'to want' is similar outside of the present tense.

The verb 'to be' is actually composed of three different stems: one beginning with w-, one beginning with b-, and one beginning with s-. These are traditionally thought of as forming two separate words:wesan, comprising the forms beginning with w- and s-, andbēon, comprising the forms beginning with b-.

In the present tense,wesan andbēon carried a difference in meaning.Wesan was used in most circumstances, whereasbēon was used for the future and for certain kinds of general statements.

Prepositions (like Modern English wordsby,for, andwith) sometimes follow the word which they govern (especially pronouns), in which case they are calledpostpositions.

The following is a list of prepositions in theOld English language.Prepositions may govern theaccusative,genitive,dative orinstrumentalcases.

Old English syntax was similar in many ways to that of Modern English. However, there were some important differences. Some were simply consequences of the greater level of nominal and verbal inflection, and word order was generally freer. There are also differences in the default word order and in the construction of negation, questions, relative clauses and subordinate clauses.

• The defaultword order wasverb-second; this resembles modern German or Dutch more than Modern English.
• There was nodo-support in questions and negatives.
• Multiple negatives could stack up in a sentence and intensified each other (negative concord).
• Sentences with subordinate clauses of the type "When X, Y" did not use awh-type word for the conjunction but used ath-typecorrelative conjunction (e.g.,þā X, þā Y instead of "When X, Y").

There was some flexibility in word order of Old English since the heavily inflected nature of nouns, adjectives, and verbs often indicated the relationships between clause arguments.Scrambling ofconstituents was common. Even sometimes scrambling within a constituent occurred, as inBeowulf line 708wrāþum on andan:

Something similar occurs in line 713in sele þām hēan "in the high hall" (lit. "in hall the high").

Extraposition of constituents out of larger constituents is common even in prose, as in the well-known tale ofCynewulf and Cyneheard, which begins

Hēr Cynewulf benam Sigebryht his rīces ond westseaxna wiotan for unryhtum dǣdum, būton Hamtūnscīre; ...

(Literally) "Here Cynewulf deprived Sigebryht of his kingdomand West Saxons' counselors for unright deeds, except Hampshire"

(translated) "Here Cynewulf and the West Saxon counselors deprived Sigebryht of his kingdom, other than Hampshire, for unjust actions"

The wordsond westseaxna wiotan "and the West Saxon counselors" (lit. "and (the) counselors of (the) West Saxons") have beenextraposed from (moved out of) the compound subject they belong in, in a way that would be impossible in modern English. In Old English, case inflection preserves the meaning: the verbbeniman "to deprive" (appearing in this sentence in the formbenam, "[he] deprived") needs a word in the genitive case to show what someone or something is deprived of, which in this sentence isrīces "of kingdom" (nominativerīce, "kingdom"), whereaswiotan "counselors" is in the nominative case and therefore serves a different role entirely (the genitive of it would bewiotana, "of counselors"); for this reason the interpretation that Cynewulf deprived Sigebryht of the West Saxon counselors was not possible for speakers of Old English. The Old English sentence is in theory ambiguous, as it contains one more word in the genitive:westseaxna ("of West Saxons", nominativewestseaxan "West Saxons"), and the formwiotan "counselors" may also represent the accusative case in addition to the nominative, thus for example creating the grammatical possibility of the interpretation that Cynewulf also took the West Saxons away from the counselors, but this would have been difficult to conceive.

Main clauses in Old English tend to have averb-second (V2) order, where the finite verb is the second constituent in a sentence, regardless of what comes first. There are vestigial examples of this in modern English:Rarelyhave I seen ... However, V2 order was much more extensive in Old English.

Insubordinate clauses, the word order is less restricted, with both verb-second and verb-final word order occurring, though verb-final is more common. Furthermore, in poetry, the rules of prose are frequently broken. In Beowulf, for example, main clauses frequently have verb-initial or verb-final order, recalling earlier stages of Old English syntax. (However, in clauses introduced byþā, which can mean either "when" or "then", and where word order is crucial for telling the difference, the normal word order is nearly always followed.)

Linguists who work within theChomskyantransformational grammar paradigm often believe that it is more accurate to describe Old English (and otherGermanic languages with the same word-order patterns like modern German) as having underlying subject-object-verb (SOV) ordering. According to this theory, all sentences are initially generated using this order, but in main clauses, the verb is moved back to the V2 position (technically, the verb undergoesV-to-T raising). That is said to explain the fact that Old English allows inversion of subject and verb as a general strategy for forming questions, while modern English uses this strategy almost only withauxiliary verbs and the main verb "to be", requiringdo-support in other cases.

Questions are normally formed in Old English by inverting the order of subject and finite verb. For example,hīe libbaþ "they live" becomeslibbaþ hīe, literally "live they?" This is still followed in modern English with verbs such asbe (am I?) andhave (have they?) but for most other contexts it has been replaced bydo-support.

Old English did not use forms equivalent to "who, when, where" in relative clauses (as in "The man whom I saw") or subordinate clauses ("When I got home, I went to sleep").

Instead,relative clauses used one of the following:

1. An invariable complementizerþe
2. Thedemonstrative pronounse, sēo, þæt
3. The combination of the two, as inse þe

Subordinate clauses tended to usecorrelative conjunctions, e.g.

Þā ic hām ēode, þā slēp ic.

(word-for-word) "Then I home went, then slept I."

(translated) "When I went home, I slept."

The word order usually distinguished the subordinate clause (with verb-final order) from the main clause (withverb-second word order).

The equivalents of "who, when, where" were used only asinterrogative pronouns andindefinite pronouns, as inAncient Greek andSanskrit.

Besidesþā ... þā ..., othercorrelative conjunctions occurred, often in pairs of identical words, e.g.:

• þǣr X, þǣr Y: "Where X, Y"
• þanon X, þanon Y: "Whence (from where/wherefrom) X, Y"
• þider X, þider Y: "Whither (to where/whereto) X, Y"
• þēah (þe) X, þēah Y: "Although X, Y"
• þenden X, þenden Y: "While X, Y"
• þonne X, þonne Y: "Whenever X, Y"
• þæs X, þæs Y: "As/after/since X, Y"
• þȳ X, þȳ Y: "The more X, the more Y"

Thephonology of Old English is necessarily somewhat speculative, since it is preserved purely as awritten language. Nevertheless, there is a very largecorpus of Old English, and the written language apparently indicates phonologicalalternations quite faithfully, so it is not difficult to draw certain conclusions about the nature ofOld English phonology.

• Middle English
• Old English phonology

• Hogg, Richard M. (2011).A Grammar of Old English: Morphology. Vol. 2. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Mitchell, Bruce (1985).Old English Syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
• Moore, Samuel; Knott, Thomas A. (1958) [1919]. Hulbert, James R. (ed.).The Elements of Old English (10th ed.). Ann Arbor, Michigan: George Wahr Publishing Co.
• Ringe, Don; Taylor, Ann (2014).The Development of Old English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• The Magic Sheet, one page color PDF summarizing Old English declension, from Peter S. Baker, inspired by Moore and Marckwardt's 1951Historical Outlines of English Sounds and Inflections
• J. Bosworth & T.N. Toller, An Anglo-Saxon dictionary: Germanic Lexicon Project

• Brunner, Karl (1965).Altenglische Grammatik (nach der angelsächsischen Grammatik von Eduard Sievers neubearbeitet) (3rd ed.). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.
• Campbell, A. (1959).Old English Grammar. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Mitchell, Bruce & Robinson, Fred (2001)A Guide to Old English; 6th ed. Oxford: Blackwell PublishingISBN 0-631-22636-2
• Quirk, Randolph; & Wrenn, C. L. (1957).An Old English Grammar (2nd ed.) London: Methuen.

• Old English grammar
• Old English

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