Concord is agreement in gender, case, number or person between different
words that share a reference. For example, if a sentence contains a
proper noun "Paul" and somewhat later a pronoun "he,"
and they refer to the same person, we say that they agree in number (for
both are singular) and gender (for both are masculine).
In Modern English, the rules of concord are relatively simple, and
these rules also apply to Old English:
Concord differs in Old and Modern English mainly in that
adjectives and demonstrative
pronouns are marked for gender, case and
number in Old English, and they therefore participate in the system
of concord. We can therefore add these rules to the ones that are
familiar to us from Modern English:
- The subject must agree with its verb in person and number.
In Modern English this simply means that we must remember that a
third-person singular subject generally takes a special verb form
ending in -s. In Old English, though, all three persons were
distinguished in present singular indicative verb forms, and the
singular form of a verb always differed from the plural (see notes on
person and number).
- The pronoun must agree with its antecedent in gender and
number. If you speak of a woman named Ruth in one clause and then
in the next clause want to refer to her with a pronoun, the pronoun
must be both feminine and singular. Old English differs little from
Modern English in this respect, the main difference being that Old
English gender does not necessarily reflect the sex of what the word
refers to, so you will often notice that feminine and masculine
pronouns refer to inanimate objects.
Old English Aerobics contains two sessions on concord. The first concerns
the agreement of demonstrative pronouns and strong adjectives with
the nouns they modify, and the second concerns agreement between subject
- Adjectives and demonstrative pronouns must agree in gender,
case and number with the nouns they modify. In the noun phrase se
goda cyning, all three words, demonstrative, adjective and noun,
are masculine, nominative and singular.
- The subject must agree with the complement in case. This is
simple: both are nominative.
- The subject may agree with the participles in periphrastic
verb forms in gender, case and number. Present and past participles
may be inflected like adjectives. When they are, they must agree with
the subject. These constructions are both legal: Hie wæron
beswicene, with a plural ending on the past participle beswicene,
and Hie wæron beswicen, with an endingless past participle.
Both mean "They were deceived."