Inflected to Analytic

The change from English as an inflected language to a mostly analytic language occurred over a long period of time. One of the main influencing factors of this change to an analytic language was the interaction between the Anglo-Saxons and other cultures. Since learning all the inflections of English was complicated for non-native speakers, it simplified. For example, Old Norse was analytic and it was easier for the Vikings to communicate using fewer inflections as described in Our Faire Englische Tung.  There are several examples of ways in which the language changed, and I will give a brief overview of these. One of the major evolutions from Old English to Modern English is the simplifying of the verb. In Old English, there were two main categories for verbs: strong verbs, which changed the interior vowel of the stem word, and weak verbs, which added endings to the stem. Strong verbs were divided into seven classes and weak verbs into three. Over time, these inflectional aspects changed, as illustrated by the Old English word “helpan,” which evolved into “help.” The different forms of helpan were helpe, healp, hilpst, hulpe, hilpþ, helpaþ, hulpon, helpen, help, helpende, and holpen. Today, there help only has the forms help, helped, and helping. In addition to verbs, nouns also changed and the plural forms were standardized. Some examples of this are stan/stanas, which turned into stone/stones; nama/namen, which turned into name/names; scip/scipu, which turned into ship/ships; sunu/suna, which turned into son/sons; and boc/bek, which turned into book/books. As demonstrated above, many of the inflected forms of English words have been greatly simplified and standardized, though not all of them such as man/men and foot/feet to name a couple. Today, English cannot be classified as a purely analytic language because some endings do change. There are eight remaining inflected parts (called morphemes) of English remaining, which are plural, possessive, comparative, superlative, 3rd Person singular present agreement, past tense, past participle, present participle. In these ways, Old English has evolved many analytic aspects from its original inflected form.

Masculine a declension
	armr (arm)		hamarr (hammer)		hęrr (a people)		hęllir (cave)
Case	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Nominative	arm-r	arm-ar	hamar-r	ham'r-ar	hęr-r	hęr-jar	hęll-ir	hęll-ar
Accusative	arm	arm-a	hamar	ham'ra	hęr	hęr-ja	hęll-i	hęll-a
Genitive	arm-s	arm-a	hamar-s	ham'ra	hęr-jar	hęr-ja	hęll-is	hęll-a
Dative	arm-i	ǫrm-um	ham'r-i	hǫm'r-um	hęr-i	hęr-jum	hęll-i	hęll-um

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Norse_morphology#Strong_nouns 

The Strong Noun Declension
Case	Masculine		Neuter		Feminine
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Nominative	–	-as	–	-u/–	-u/–	-a
Accusative	–	-as	–	-u/–	-e	-a, -e
Genitive	-es	-a	-es	-a	-e	-a
Dative	-e	-um	-e	-um	-e	-um

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_grammar#Strong_nouns 

http://www.verbix.com/webverbix/go.php?D1=17&T1=brenna&H1=117 
http://www.verbix.com/webverbix/go.php?T1=helpan&D1=23&H1=123&imageField.x=0&imageField.y=0 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_French#Nouns