Old English Grammatical Cases Declension
In Old English, grammatical agreement was extensive. Similar to nouns, other word classes also declined for case, changing their form based on their grammatical function in a sentence. The four primary cases were the nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative.
Classes with Four Cases
Besides nouns, the following grammatical classes also possessed these four cases:
- Pronouns: Personal, demonstrative, and interrogative pronouns all inflected for case.
- Adjectives: Adjectives agreed in case (as well as number and gender) with the nouns they modified.
- Definite Article: The definite article ('se', 'sēo', 'þæt') also inflected for all four cases.
Verbs, on the other hand, primarily conjugated for tense, mood, person, and number, but did not decline for case in the same manner as nouns, pronouns, or adjectives.
Therefore, pronouns, adjectives, and the definite article are the grammatical classes, besides nouns, that had the four cases in Old English.
Important Questions from Languages
- Which of the following states of India has Konkani as a prominently spoken language?
- Which of the following does NOT belong to the Tibeto-Burman language family?
- Indo-Aryan language group belongs to which family?
- The direct French influence on the English language during the Middle English period was in the form of
- The word order in Modern English became relatively fixed because
