OLD ENGLISH INFLEXIONS The inflexions of Old English are of the typical Germanic and West Germanic character. Grammatical gender is preserved and the definite article, an old demonstrative, is fully inflected in singular and plural of all three genders. In addition to the case distinctions exhibited also by nouns, the article still preserves the old instrumental. The nouns retain traces of the oldest declen sional types inherited from Aryan, but the best represented are the masculine and neuter -a-stems, and the feminine -o-stems. In ad dition to the vowel stems the old -n-stems are very common. The -n- (weak) declension is also found in adjectives when preceded by the definite article or by a possessive pronoun. The com parative of adjectives ends in -or, -er, and the superlative in -ost, -est. The personal pronouns of the first and second person and of the third person singular feminine, agree with those of other Germanic languages, but the forms of the third person mas culine and neuter—he, heo, hit, etc., differ from those of O.H.G., Gothic and O.N., but agree with the O.Fris. and O.Sax. forms, and are derived from an Aryan demonstrative ki-, etc., and traces of which are found in Gothic Nita, "this," neuter himadaga, "this day," cf. O.E. dat. masc. and neut. him, and in hina-dag, "this day," cf. O.E. pine, acc. masc. O.E. agrees with other old Ger manic languages in having two main types of verbal inflexion to express past time, the "weak" which form the Pret. and P.P. with the suffix (O.E. -de, -ede, -ode, and -ed, or -od), derived ulti mately from an Aryan base, *dhe—,"to put, place," seen in Greek rL_On-µt. and in English do, and the so-called "strong" conjugation, in which an alternation of vowels occurs according to the prin ciples of Aryan and Germanic Gradation, e.g., inf. sprecan, "to speak," Pres. is sprece, "I speak," Pret. Sing. sprcec, "I, he, spoke," Pret. P. spræcon, the same type occurring also in sprece, "thou spakest," P.P. (ge)sprecen; Inf. ceosan, Pres. ceose, etc. Pret. Sing ceas (Sec. Pers. cure) Pret. P1. curon, P.P. (ge)coren.
The personal endings of verbs agree generally with Germanic and Aryan. The -t usual in the ending of the Second Person Singular is not original, but derived from the following pronoun, in inverted constructions such as liofast "livest thou," etc. O.E. agrees with other Germanic languages in having certain anomalous auxiliary and preterite-present verbs. In the verb "to be" eom, "am," shows a trace of the old verbs in -mi, the Pret. was, "was," wæron, "were," is common to all Germanic tongues. The same is true of seed, "shall," seeolde, "should" ; cann, "can" (Pres. Pl. cannon), Pret. cis pe. W at, "I know," Goth. wait, cognate with of a, has Pl. witon, Pret. wisse from Aryan *veid-tho which shows the same gradational form as Greek 1,8- j€v.
Some of these forms show that changes characteristic of Late Popular Latin, or Romance, had already taken place before the borrowing into English. Examples are :—O.E. cæ f ester, "a halter," Lat. capistrum; prafost, "officer, provost," Lat. praepositus; cu gele, "monk's cowl," Lat. cuculla; cylene, for Lat. colonia, occurs in an old form of the ending of Lincoln, which exhibits traces of characteristic Celtic modifications in the Latin word, as well as the later 0.E. process of i-mutation. The former made *colon into *colin; the latter turned this into *culin—whence cylen(e). The common 0.E. eeaster, eæster, originally applied to a Roman forti fied town, then to a town or city in general, from Lat. castra, which survives in Chester, Winchester, etc., shows three typical 0.E. sound changes—the fronting of a to æ, the fronting of the initial consonant, and, in the W. Sax. form, the diphthonging of ce to ea after this consonant.
During the 6th and 7th centuries England was converted to Christianity, and through the Roman missionaries a fresh stream of Latin words less popular in character and form, was introduced —sacerd, "priest," from sacerdos; discipul, from discipulus; mu nuc, "monk," from monachus; papa, "Pope"; martyr; creda, "creed," from credo; ælmesse, "alms," from alimosina; mcesse, "the Mass," from missa, and many others. Equally interesting and important are the new applications and adaptations of old native elements for the expression of Christian ideas. Thus husl, "sacrifice," cf. Goth. hunsl, is applied to the eucharistic sacrifice, and survives in the now archaic verb to housel; seearu, "cutting, shearing," formed from the base of seieran, "to cut, shear," is applied to the ecclesiastical tonsure; fulwian, "to baptize," from earlier full, "complete, full" and wihan, "to make holy, conse crate," together with the noun, fulluht and fulwiht, "baptism." Other examples of adaptation are husl-f egn, "acolyte," lit. "housel servant, or thane"; godspellere, "gospeller," perhaps originally a literal translation of Lat. evangelista, though the first element was later probably identified with the word God.
The number of Celtic loan-words in O.E. is astonishingly small. The word ride, "rule, dominion, kingdom," must be a very early Primitive Germanic inheritance, since it is found in varying forms in Gothic and Scandinavian, as well as in 0. Sax. and O.H.G. and its k (as in Goth. reiks) shows that it must have been borrowed as *rig- from a Celtic source, before the characteristic Germanic "shift" of voiced to voiceless stops. The O. Irish is ri, Gen. rig, cognate with Lat. "king," as in rex, Gen. reg-is. The English word survives only in bishopric.