Old English Morphology, Place Names (Germanic and Celtic morphemes)

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How many cases does Old English have and what are they? How many grammatical genders are there?

1. Cases

   1. Nominative

   2. Accusative

   3. Genitive

   4. Dative

2. Grammatical genders

   1. Masculine

   2. Neuter

   3. Feminine

How many cases does Modern English have and what are they? How many grammatical genders are there? How many inflections does it have? What’s the exception to this rule?

1. Cases:

   1. Nominative, Accusative, Genitive

2. Grammatical genders:

   1. None

3. It hardly has any inflections

4. The exception to this rule is pronouns

Place names (Germanic morphemes)

1. Old English

   1. -hyrst ‘copse, wood’ (Wadhurst)

   2. -ham ‘dwelling, fold’ (Newnham)

   3. -stede ‘place’ (Maplestead)

2. Old Norse

   1. -beck ‘brook’ (Grizebeck)

   2. -by ‘town’ (Thursby)

   3. -dale ‘valley’ (Uldale)

   4. -thorp ‘village’ (Ugthorpe)

   5. -thwaite ‘piece of land’ (Braithwaite)

   6. -toft ‘piece of ground (Langtoft)

Place names (Celtic morphemes)

1. Lllan-/Lan-, Kil-/Kirk-

2. Cum- (cf. Welsh cwm ‘small valley, hollow’; OE cumb) (Batcombe, Winchcombe, Cumwhitton, Cumdivock, Cumlongan)

3. Names of many rivers and ancient settlements: Avon (cf. Welsh afon ‘river’), Devon, Dover, Exe, London, Thames (‘dark’), Wye