7. The Grammar of Old English

2. The chapter mentions cases in which grammatical gender concord could be violated. Do we find violations of concord (with respect to grammatical categories other than gender) in PDE?''''Tučný text'

Agreement (concord) is a process in which the grammatical information expressed in one form must be repeated in other forms which accompany it: that is, if one form expresses masculine gender, singular number and nominative case, then any form related to it must make the corresponding distinctions. The forms are then said to agree in gender, number and case. In MoE agreement is limited because we rely on word order and prepositions for grammatical information. In Old English agreement is much more widespread: • Demonstratives and adjectives agree with nouns they modify in number, gender and case • Nouns and their pronouns agree in number, gender and person • Verbs agree with their subjects in person and number When there is a conflict between natural gender and grammatical gender, we occasionally find that agreement between nouns and their pronouns is violated. Ex. mægden (maiden) is grammatically neuter, but referred to as she rather than it. Or weall (wall) is referred to as it rather than he. = the beginning of grammatical gender being replaced by a system of natural gender.

In PDE – no examples of violation in GENDER, but in NUMBER: • Has anyone brought their camera? – anyone used to avoid the gender specification • The government have broken all their promises. – collective nouns (audience, public…), notional concord • Bacon and eggs makes a good breakfast. – 1 meal – notional concord • No one except his own supporters agree with him. – the principle of proximity (preference of closely preceding noun) • Two and two is/are four. – arithmetical sums, both possible