The adjective. Grammatical Categories
As stated before, the adjective in OE could change for number, gender and case. Those were dependent grammatical categories or forms of agreement of the adjective with the noun it modified or with the subject of the sentence — if the adjective was a predicative. Like nouns, adjectives had three genders and two numbers. The category of case in adjectives differed from that of nouns: in addition to the four cases of nouns they had one more case, Instr. It was used when the adjective served as an attribute to a noun in the Dat. case expressing an instrumental meaning — e.g.: lytle werede 'with (the help of) a small troop'.
Weak and Strong Declension
As in other OG languages, most adjectives in OE could be declined in two ways: according to the weak and to the strong declension. The formal differences between the declensions, as well as their origin, were similar to those of the noun declensions. The strong and weak declensions arose due to the use of several stem-forming suffixes in PG: vocalic a-, o-, u- and i- and consonantal n-. Accordingly, there developed sets of endings of the strong declension mainly coinciding with the endings of a-stems of nouns for adjectives in the Masc. and Neut. and of o-stems — in the Fem., with some differences between long-and short-stemmed adjectives, variants with j- and w-, monosyllabic and polysyllabic adjectives and some remnants of other stems. Some endings in the strong declension of adjectives have no parallels in the noun paradigms; they are similar to the endings of pronouns: -um for Dat. sg, -ne for Acc. Masc., [r] in some Fem. and pl endings. Therefore the strong declension of adjectives is sometimes called the "pronominal" declension. As for the weak declension, it uses the same markers as (n-stems of nouns except that in the Gen. pl the pronominal ending -ra is often used instead of the weak -ena.
The difference between the strong and the weak declension of adjectives was not only formal but also semantic. Unlike a noun, an adjective did not belong to a certain type of declension. Most adjectives could be declined in both ways. The choice of the declension was determined by a number of factors: the syntactical function of the adjective, the degree of comparison and the presence of noun determiners. The adjective had a strong form when used predicatively and when used attributively without any determiners, e.g.:
ða menn sindon gode 'the men are good'
The weak form was employed when the adjective was preceded by a demonstrative pronoun or the Gen. case of personal pronouns.
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| Singular | |
| Strong (pure a- and o-stems) M N F | Weak M N F |
| Nom. blind blind blind Gen. blindes blindes blindre Dat. blindum blindum blindre Acc. blindne blind blinde Instr. blinde blinde blindre | blinda blinde blinde blindan blindan blindan blindan blindan blindan blindan blinde blindan blindan blindan blindan |
| Plural | |
| Nom. blinde blind blinda, -e Gen. blindra blindra blindra Dat. blindum blindum blindum Acc. blinde blind blinda, -e Instr. blindum blindum blindum (NE blind) | All genders blindan blindra, -ena blindum blindan blindum |
Some adjectives, however, did not conform with these rules.
Degrees of Comparison
Like adjectives in other languages, most OE adjectives distinguished between three degrees of comparison: positive, comparative and superlative. The regular means used to form the comparative and the superlative from the positive were the suffixes -ra and -est/ost. Sometimes suffixation was accompanied by an interchange of the root-vowel.
The adjective god had suppletive forms. Suppletion was a very old way of building the degrees of comparison
god – bettra – bet(e)st,
lytel – læssa – læst.
Lecture 4. OLD ENGLISH GRAMMAR
The OE verb was characterised by many peculiar features. Though the verb had few grammatical categories, its paradigm had a very complicated structure: verbs fell into numerous morphological classes and employed a variety of form-building means. All the forms of the verb were synthetic, as analytical forms were only beginning to appear. The non-finite forms had little in common with the finite forms but shared many features with the nominal parts of speech.
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