Old English give certain evidence of an influence on syntax. The change to Old English from Old Norse was substantive, pervasive, and of a democratic character. Old Norse and Old English resembled each other closely like cousins and with some words in common, they roughly understood each other; in time the inflections melted away and the analytic pattern emerged. It is most "important to recognize that in many words the English and Scandinavian language differed chiefly in their inflectional elements. The body of the word was so nearly the same in the two languages that only the endings would put obstacles in
Old English grammar feminine nominative article "sēo", yielding "she"; whereas the "h" in plural forms such as "hīe" was replaced with "þ" under Norse influence as it evolved (a slower development that was not complete until well into the Middle English period), yielding "they, them, their". Prepositions (like Modern English words "by", "for", and "with") often follow the word which they govern, in which case they are called "postpositions". Also, if the object of a preposition was marked in the dative case, a preposition may conceivably be located anywhere in the sentence. The following is a list of prepositions in the Old English