36
OE division into genders disappeared as well.
Now gender was semantically
associated with the differentiation of sex. Therefore, the formal grouping into genders
was smoothly and naturally superseded by a semantic division into inanimate and
animate nouns, with a further subdivision of the latter into males and females.
The category of number was the most stable of all. In late ME the ending
–es
was the prevalent marker of nouns in the plural. The ME plural ending
–en
, used as a
variant marker (especially in the weak declension in the Southern dialects) lost its
productivity, so in Standard MnE it is found only in
oxen, brethren,
and
children
.
A small group of Middle English nouns with homonymous
forms for singular
and plural was further reduced to a few exceptions we find in MnE:
deer, sheep,
swine.
The group of former root-stems has survived only as exceptions:
man, tooth
,
etc
.
It should be noted, however, that not all irregular forms in MnE have traces of
OE declensions: some forms have come from other
languages together with the
borrowed words.
Достарыңызбен бөлісу: 
