[2.] THE GRAMMAR OF NOUNS.—In the very oldest English—or, as it is commonly called, Anglo-Saxon—nouns were declined in different ways, and had several declensions, just as German and Latin have. Each of these declensions had four cases. Nowadays we have only one declension and only one inflection for the cases of nouns. That one inflection is ’s for the possessive case. The following is an example of an old declension:
Declension of EAGE, the eye.
| Sing. | Plur. | |
| Nom. | Eage (eye). | Eagan. |
| Pos. | Eag-an (of). | Eag-ena. |
| Dat. | Eag-an (to). | Eag-am. |
| Obj. | Eage. | Eagan. |
Again, in this English, gender did not follow sex, but was poetic and fantastic. Tongue and week were feminine nouns, as they still are in modern German; star and sea, masculine; wife and child, neuter.—In old English there were a great many plural endings, as -as, -an, -u, -a, -o. After the Norman Conquest they were greatly reduced, -es or -s being now the ordinary ending, -en being exceptional.
[3.] THE GRAMMAR OF ADJECTIVES.—Adjectives had also cases. Adjectives had four cases, three genders, and two numbers. Now we say good for all cases, genders, and numbers. In the fourteenth century the only ending which adjectives possessed was e for the plural. Thus Chaucer (1340-1400) writes of the little birds:
And smalë fowlës maken melodie.
[4.] GRAMMAR OF DEFINITE ARTICLE.—This article was declined like an adjective, in three different genders. Now it has no inflections at all. It has still, however, a clear and distinct memory of one case, which survives in such phrases as, ‘The more, the merrier.’ This sentence might be written, ‘þŷ more, þŷ merrier.’ That is to say, ‘By that more, by that merrier.’ The measure of the increase of the company is the measure of the increase of the merriment.
[5.] GRAMMAR OF THE PERSONAL PRONOUN.—The personal pronoun was also highly inflected in the oldest English; and the two personal pronouns of the first and second persons possessed this remarkable peculiarity, that it had three numbers, singular, dual, and plural. The dual form stood for We two and for You two; and, if we cared to trouble ourselves nowadays with a host of inflections, these would certainly be very convenient.
All this is now very much changed. The dual number is completely gone; the use of thou, except in religious compositions, has been given up, and the true possessive of it, which is his, has given place to the incorrect form its. The possessive its is very seldom found in Shakspeare, and there is only one instance of it in our present translation of the Bible: ‘That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest thou shalt not reap’ (Lev. xxv. 5). But another reading is, ‘of it own accord.’
[6.] GRAMMAR OF VERBS.—The verb possessed also, in the oldest times, before the language was at all influenced by Norman-French, a large number of inflections. At the present time a verb has only five inflections; but, if it belongs to the strong conjugation, it may have six. Let us look at the old verb niman, to take, which still survives in our adjective nimble, which means quick at taking.