The categorisation of nouns in English historical linguistics. An overview

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the current criticisms of traditional ways of categorising nouns in English historical linguistics. It presents an overview of the recent objections to the conventional classifications voiced by such scholars as Kastovsky (1995), Lass (1997) and Krygier (1998, 2001). The classifications of nouns in Old English and Middle English found in recognised handbooks such as Campbell (1959) or Wełna (1996) are based on the original, i.e. Indo-European and Proto-Germanic, terminations of the stem of nouns. The classifications of nouns in Early and Late Modern English concentrate on the nouns' development from the original categories. This kind of approach to English historical morphology has recently been criticised for being simplistic and diachronically biased, and a need for new and different classifications has been postulated. The present paper does not offer any alternative classification of English nouns, rather, it postulates the change in the attitude to the traditional morphological categorisations.