Re: English Changes or what into Conlangs

Bryan Maloney wrote:
>
> Didn't the masculine gender sort of (and I'm being REALLY LOOSE here)
> replace the other gender(s) of Old English during the shift to Middle
> English?  That might explain a lot of the -s -es pluralization.
Well,
      Strong Nouns                             Weak Nouns
    Masculine   Neuter     Feminine    Masculine   Neuter     Feminine
    S     P     S     P    S    P      S     P     S     P    S    P
Nom --    as    --    (u)  u    a      a     an    e     an   e    an
Acc --    as    --    (u)  e    a      an    an    e     an   an   an
Gen es    a     es    a    e    a      an    ena   an    ena  an   ena
Dat e     um    e     um   e    um     an    um    an    um   an   um

Final vowels were reduced to schwa, and finally lost, so all the
feminine strong endings became the same, and the neuter simply lost the
distinctive plural.  The genders in the weak nouns merged, already being
quite similar to begin with.

--
"Old linguists never die - they just come to voiceless stops." -
anonymous
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files
http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-Name: NikTailor