Читать книгу A Book of Middle English - J. A. Burrow - Страница 33

Many of the Old English mutated plurals (with change of stem vowel) survive, as indeed they do in Modern English. In The Owl and the Nightingale the following forms are found for man:

sg.	nom./acc.	mon, man
	gen.	monnes
	dat.	men, manne
pl.	nom./acc.	men
	gen.	monne
	dat.	monne, manne, men

Here the mutated form men may be dative singular as well as plural. This survival of the Old English pattern is exceptional, and other texts have the mutated form only in the plural. The genitive plural is elsewhere usually men(ne)s, but note men hacches, ‘men’s kitchen‐doors’, 7a/29, and bondemen barnes, ‘villeins’ children’, 7a/70.

Other nouns of this type are:

singular	plural
fot, ‘foot’	fet
gos, ‘goose’	ges
mous, ‘mouse’	mys (mus 2/87)
toþ, ‘tooth’	teþ

Broþer had the plural breþer, 9/39, but in the South an additional ‐en plural was often added, as in bretherne, 7b/217, whence Modern English ‘brethren’.