Anglo-Saxon), had begun to displace the dative plural ending um. Later, on took the place of this om.

2. Change of the Vowels of the Endings to e. -A sweeping change, begun before the Conquest, advancing rapidly after it, and completed by the end of the twelfth century, was the weakening of the other vowels of the endings After um had become om, and then on, and by this further change en, and after the ena of the genitive plural had conformed to the nominative and accusative, this leveling of the vowels to e would reduce the endings of the vowel declension to e and es, and those of the consonant to e and

to e.

en.

3. The Dropping of Final n and of the Final e. The sloughing off of final n, begun before the Conquest, checked for a while, and resumed after the Conquest, followed the changes already spoken of. When completed, and few are found in Chaucer, the endings left in both declensions are e and es only. And now this e final, seldom pronounced as a distinct syllable, disappeared from the orthography as well as from pronunciation. At its disappearance, had there been no adoption from the French nor any extension of forms already in Anglo-Saxon, the English noun would be even more destitute of case and number endings than it is. There was no adoption, but there was an extension. This was accomplished by

4. The Influence of the Masculine and Neuter Genders of the Vowel Declension.-The masculine, as seen above, had, in the nominative and accusative plural, the ending as; and both genders had, in the genitive singular, the ending es. And these two cases of the masculine plural and this one case of the masculine and neuter singular, in only one of the two declensions, had authority sufficient to

extend their inflections to the other nouns in the language. and to give the law to all foreign nouns seeking admission into English.

By 1550, this as, changed to es, ceased to be pronounced separately, except when the form of the word required it, as in boxes and houses; and, when unpronounced, the e was omitted from the spelling. So that now to form the genitive singular, and the plural throughout, we universally employ s. The use of the apostrophe, to distinguish the genitive singular from the cases of the plural, arose in the seventeenth century, and was fully established by the eighteenth. Its use was subsequently extended to the genitive plural—standing here after the ending s, and distinguishing this case from the other cases of the plural.

XVI. Exceptions to the Cases just given.-1. In their Number and Names.-The Anglo-Saxon had four cases, the English has three. The dative has been dropped, though in such expressions as I taught him grammar, I gave him this advice, we are still obliged to say that him is the indirect, or dative, object. For accusative we say objective; and for genitive, possessive.

2. In their Offices.-The objective case after to and for has largely taken upon itself the office of the Anglo-Saxon dative; and, after of, much of the function of the genitive. In the Anglo-Saxon, the duty of the genitive was manifold. It expressed the myriad relations denoted in English by of. But now, while theoretically the ending may be attached to any noun, practically it is almost restricted to nouns naming things that can possess; and so the old genitive is now not improperly called the possessive case. But such uses of the case as the following, from the best of authors, and with nouns denoting usually measures of time, show that

the statement respecting restriction must not be rigidly taken :

An hour's drive, a year's trial, a hair's breadth, a month's notice, earth's surface, harm's way, winter's day, water's edge, yard's breadth, day's occurrence, week's sport, summer's toil, five minutes' drive, state's evidence, and a moment's reflection.

XVII. Exceptions to the Plural in s.-1. The Plurals in n.-Only one Anglo-Saxon noun of the consonant declension oxa-our ox-retains its old n, and that only in the plural, oxen. Even in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, only nine of the original an nouns end in n; these only in the plural, and three of the nine had taken on the s ending in addition. But three nouns have in the plural deserted from the vowel declension to the consonant-one completely, two in part. Child, Anglo-Saxon cild, adds en to its old plural in r,-Anglo-Saxon cildru, English children; and Anglo-Saxon brōðor and cũ retain ʼn in exceptional uses, brethren and kine; ordinarily, brothers and cows.

2. Plurals in the Nominative and Objective same as in the Singular.-There are nouns in English with the same form in the singular and the plural; as, sheep, deer, gross, hose, swine, vermin, etc.

Some have been, others are still, occasionally so used, though they have a form for each number. Shakespeare often uses mile, year, fathom, pound, etc., in the plural; and even such modern authors as Hawthorne, Holmes, Kingsley, and Longfellow say,

Two yoke of oxen; of books but few, some fifty score; four pair; and the folk of the village.

Our words of this class largely indicate weight, number, length-measure of some kind. These exceptions, complete

or partial, to the rule for plurals in these cases is explained by reference to the paradigm of the Anglo-Saxon vowel declension. There was a class of nouns in the neuter and another in the feminine (the neuter more numerous than the feminine), that added nothing to the stem in either number to form the nominative and the accusative. Our unchanged plurals can be traced back directly to AngloSaxon, or can be charged to Anglo-Saxon analogy.

3. Plurals formed by Internal Change.-In English to-day six nouns, man, foot, tooth, goose, mouse, and louse, add neither s nor n to form the plural, nor is their plural like the singular. It is formed by a change of the stemvowel. This irregularity also is inherited from the AngloSaxon. The Anglo-Saxon föt (foot) may be taken to represent them. (Anglo-Saxon ō and ē are pronounced like long o and long a.)

This change of o to e in three cases was caused by the vowel i, which once followed the stem, and had sufficient influence upon the preceding syllable to modify its vowel in the direction of i. This variation is called mutation, and shows its stria in many other English words. The i of the ending disappeared, as the change of vowel it had wrought in the stem was regarded as ample to mark the case. So that what was originally euphonic, accompanying the ending, and accidentally helping to denote the case, came in time to do it exclusively. But the cases constantly occurring were the nominative and the accusative (objective).

3

A

The dative singular fet faded from memory, and fēt (the ẽ becoming, as usual, ee in English), whenever found, was looked upon as the plural of fōt. The same i wrought the change which appears in the English plural of the remaining five, men, teeth, geese, mice, and lice. In the AngloSaxon there were eleven of these mutation plurals.

4. Foreign Plurals in English.-There are foreign nouns in English which have brought along their original endings. They end in us, like focus and fungus—plurals, foci and fungi; in um, as memorandum and stratum,— plurals, memoranda and strata; in is,--oasis and parenthesis pluralizing as oases and parentheses; in ix, ex,—calix and vortex pluralizing variously as calices and calixes, vortices and vortexes. Hebrew cherub and seraph have the plurals cherubim and seraphim; and French beau, the plural beaux. They all in time bow to the law which imposes s or es as the plural ending in English; but in the process of Anglicising they have two forms; as, seraphim and seraphs, indices and indexes. Frequently, as in these two pairs, these different forms have different meanings assigned them.

XVIII. The Loss of Grammatical Gender.-By grammatical gender we mean the gender of the noun as determined by its termination or declension, without exclusive, if indeed any, reference to the sex, or to the absence of sex, of the object named. We mean gender as it is in German and French to-day. In these, one must remember the gender of every noun, since its gender determines the form of the adjective used. From this labor the student of English is exempt, as the sex of the object determines the gender of its name. If the object is a male, the noun is masculine ; if a female, the noun is feminine; if without sex, neuter.