Nouns

In Modern English, nouns have only a few inflections. The plural is usually made by adding -s, and a possessive is made by adding -'s. These inflections come to us from Old English. But Old English had many more inflections than Modern English has, for nouns were marked in these categories:

• Gender. Every noun was masculine, feminine or neuter, and the gender of a noun did not depend on its "natural" gender. Thus scip ship and wif woman were neuter, wærscipe prudence and wifman woman were masculine, and snotornes wisdom and mægð maiden were feminine.
• Declension. The manner in which a noun was inflected. In Modern English we have one major declension consisting of nouns that make their plural by adding -s; this comes to us from the Old English strong declension. But some nouns make plurals by adding -en (e.g. oxen), and these are descended from the weak declension; still others make plurals by changing their vowel (e.g. mice), and these are from the athematic declension. Old English had other, minor declensions as well.
• Case. The Modern English possessive is descended from the Old English masculine/neuter genitive, but otherwise Modern English nouns are not marked for case, which expresses a noun's function in the sentence. Old English had four cases, nominative, accusative, genitive and dative, and traces of a fifth, the instrumental.
• Number. This is the easiest inflectional category, since we still inflect nouns for plurality. But Old English had both singular and plural endings, and these varied depending on a word's gender, case and declension.