As it has been mentioned in Lecture 14, the Noun had the following categories in OE:
Number –Singular (Sg) and Plural (Pl).
Case –Nominative (Nom), Genitive (Gen), Dative (Dat), Accusative (Acc).
Gender –Masculine (M), Feminine (F), Neuter (N):
· Originally (in PG) it was a semantic division (he/she/it – associated with the lexical meaning of a noun), but in OE this principle did not work any more (e.g. wīf (wife) = Neuter);
· In OE the nouns started to grouped into genders according to the suffix:
- -þu (F) – e.g. lenζþu (length);
- -ere (M) – e.g. fiscere (fisher).