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The grammar of Old English differs greatly from Modern English, predominantly being much more inflected.As a Germanic language, Old English has a morphological system similar to that of the Proto-Germanic reconstruction, retaining many of the inflections thought to have been common in Proto-Indo-European and also including constructions characteristic of the Germanic daughter languages such as ...
Nouns may be put into the construct state (contrasting with free state) to indicate possession, or when the subject of a verb follows the verb. This is also used for nouns following numerals and some prepositions (note that /ɣɾ/, 'to', only requires this for feminine nouns), as well as the word /d-/ ('and'). [13]
In Indo-European studies, a thematic vowel or theme vowel is the vowel *e [1] or *o from ablaut placed before the ending of a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) word. Nouns, adjectives, and verbs in the Indo-European languages with this vowel are thematic, and those without it are athematic.
Verner's law shifted Proto-Germanic /*h/ > /*g/ after an unstressed syllable. Afterwards, stress shifted to the first syllable in all words. [3] In many Old Norse verbs, a lost /g/ reappears in the forms of some verbs, which makes their morphology abnormal, but remain regular because the forms containing /g/s are the same for each verb they appear in.
Nouns are given in their nominative case, with the genitive case supplied in parentheses when its stem differs from that of the nominative. (For some languages, especially Sanskrit, the basic stem is given in place of the nominative.) Verbs are given in their "dictionary form". The exact form given depends on the specific language:
The grammar of Old Saxon is highly inflected, similar to that of Old English or Latin.As an ancient Germanic language, the morphological system of Old Saxon is similar to that of the hypothetical Proto-Germanic reconstruction, retaining many of the inflections thought to have been common in Proto-Indo-European and also including characteristically Germanic constructions such as the umlaut.
On the other hand, athematic nouns and verbs usually had mobile accent, with varied between strong forms, with root accent and full grade in the root (e.g. the singular active of verbs, and the nominative and accusative of nouns), and weak forms, with ending accent and zero grade in the root (e.g. the plural active and all forms of the middle ...
An adjective in Quenya agrees with the noun it describes as regards number, but in general not with respect to case. In other words, the adjectives have specific plural forms, which are used if the corresponding noun is in (ordinary) plural. On the other hand, the case of the noun in general does not influence the form of the adjective.