KYIV NATIONAL LINGUISTIC UNIVERSITY

Adjective. Morphological categories of the Adjective.
Strong and Weak Declensions of

Adjectives. Degrees of Comparison.
The Pronoun. Classes of Pronouns.
The Adverb

С. 92-108.
Ильиш Б.А. История английского языка. – Л.: Просвещение, 1972.

– С. 63-86.
Иванова И.П., Чахоян Л.П. История английского языка. – М.: Высшая школа, 1976. – С. 98-135.
Студенець Г.І. Історія англійської мови в таблицях. - К.: КДЛУ, 1998. – Tables 40-46

the synthetic grammatical forms (built with the help of

suffixes, prefixes, sound alternation and on the basis of suppletive formations) were less numerous than in PIE.
The analytical grammatical forms (built with the help of auxiliary verbs, auxiliary words, changes of stress and on the basis of the word-order) were practically absent.

Noun, the Adjective, the Pronoun,

the Numeral and the Participle.
The nominal paradigm in OE was characterized by the following grammatical categories:

same number of grammatical categories but these parts of speech

were different in the number of categorial forms composing a given grammatical category.

of Gender, Number and Case.
The category of gender was

based on the opposition of three genders – masculine, feminine and neuter.
Gender was not a purely grammatical category. It was a lexico-grammatical category, because gender was expressed not so much by the inflections but by the forms of agreement of adjectives, numerals and pronouns which modify the noun.

of the genders. The

grammatical gender didn’t always coincide with the natural gender of the person and sometimes even contradicted it (e.g. the noun wifman (woman) was declined as masculine)
The grammatical category of Gender in OE is already in the process of decay: some nouns could be declined in accordance with different genders usually in different texts: e. g. ærist (resurrection) – m, f and n.

category of case was represented by four opposite members:

N (the Nominative case);
G (the Genitive case);
D (the Dative case);
Acc. (the Accusative case).
The once existing instrumental case was no longer existing in OE. Its functions were taken by the Dative case.

classification of OE nouns is based on the most ancient

(PIE) grouping of nouns according to the stem-suffixes. The existence of stem-building suffixes is found in other IE languages. They were mostly -a, -ō, -u, -i.

But in Germanic languages stem-building suffixes practically are not observed, they have already merged with either the ending or the root. The loss was reinforced by the heavy Germanic stress on the root.

strong and weak declensions of OE nouns.
the strong declension

includes nouns with stems (-a, -ō, -i, -u) which are often called vocalic;
the weak declension comprises nouns with the stem originally ending in n-stem only. There are some minor declensions (r-stems, s-stem,nd- stems) (consonantal).
There is also the root-stem declension in which the ending is added not to the suffix but to the root immediately.

declensions which have the so-called remnants in PDE.
The OE

vowel a-stem declension is the most widely spread and proved to be the most stable in the history.

ending of the Gen. case Sg. of masculine and neuter

nouns of a-stem declension.
The plural -(e)s is the present-day survival of the OE Nom. Pl. -as of m. and n. nouns of a-stem declension.

the zero ending of plurals of such nouns as scēap,

swīn etc.
Neuter nouns with a long root-vowel had in the plural the zero ending (N. and Acc. Sg.: scēap; N. and Acc Pl.: scēap). The forms were of high frequency, and therefore the zero ending in both singular and plural have been preserved up to nowadays.

either of masculine (m.) or neuter

(n.) gender.

The difference in 2 genders is only seen in the Nom., Acc. Pl. The m. nouns had -as, in the n. nouns the ending depends on the quantity of the root syllable: the short-vowel n. nouns had in plural the ending -u (N., Acc. Sg. scip; N., Acc. Pl. scipu); the long-vowel n. nouns – zero ending.

its variants: ja-stems and wa-stems.

The nouns of this declension had the ending -an in

five of eight possible forms (hence the name of the declension - weak).

In ME -an reduced to

-en and was preserved for a period of time in such nouns as oxen, cowen, herten, eyen, eren, shoen etc. Nowadays it is preserved in oxen. In children it began to be used later by analogy.

inflections were joined not to the suffix but to the

root.
The characteristic feature of this type of nouns was the original existence of the i-element in the forms of the D. Sg. (e.g. manni and also in the N. and Acc. Pl. manniz).

lost earlier. Due to /-i/ the root vowel underwent i-Umlaut

and these forms became men. Other nouns of this class are: tōð (tooth), fōt (foot), bōc (book), āc (oak) etc.

it were characterized by high frequency of use: they were

often used in everyday speech, therefore less subjected to changes.
This specific feature explains the vowel interchange within the roots of such nouns as foot, goose, tooth, mouse etc. in the Plural form. In NE they constitute the group of exceptions as regards the formation of plural.

declinable part of speech. It had the same categories as

nouns (number, gender and case): 2 numbers, 3 genders and 5 cases.
The categories of adjectives differ from
the same categories of nouns: the categories of nouns are independent while the categories of adjectives are dependable upon the nouns. OE adjectives usually agree with the nouns they refer to in gender, number and case: this feature characterizes PIE and Modern Slavonic languages.

Strong adjectives had more endings opposed to each other,

so these adjectives had a stronger distinctive power. Weak declension of adjectives was characterized by the ending -an, which was used in most of the forms, so a lot of weak forms were homonymous and had a weak distinctive power.

adjectives wasn’t only formal but also semantic (strong declension was

used to add the meaning of indefiniteness).
Most adjectives could be declined according to both declensions. The choice of declension was determined by a number of factors: the syntactical function of the adjective and the presence of determiners.
If there was a demonstrative or a possessive pronoun referring to the noun, these pronouns determined the meaning of the phrase and the adjective was weak, if there was no pronoun, the adjective was used in the strong form:
e.g.: se micla here (this big army) but micel here (a big army).

category of Degrees of comparison.
The regular suffix of the

comparative degree was -ra, the superlative degree had mostly suffix -ost: earm – earmra – earmost.
Some adjectives had changes affected by i-Umlaut in the comparative and superlative degrees: eald – ieldra- ieldest; heah – hierra – hiehst.
There was a group of adjectives which had suppletive forms of the degrees of comparison: ʒod – betera – betst

of pronouns: Personal, Demonstrative, Definite, Indefinite, Negative and Relative. It

can be easily seen that there was no separate group of Possessive pronouns in OE. They will be separated from the group of personal pronouns only in ME.
Personal pronouns can replace nouns; therefore they are called noun-pronouns. The paradigm of personal pronouns is extremely suppletive: it consists of many individual forms.

Person (three persons: the first, the second and the third);

the category of Number (three numbers: singular, dual and plural); the category of Case (four cases: Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative). The third person singular had the category of gender with masculine, feminine, neuter forms. In plural there was no gender differences: one form could be referred to different genders.

noun-pronouns the demonstrative pronouns are called adjective-pronouns because they fulfill

identical with adjectives functions and their grammatical categories are very much alike. Practically speaking there existed two demonstrative pronouns – sē (that) and ðes (this). These pronouns had many paradigmatic forms reflecting grammatical categories of gender, case, number and also the deictic (near-far) category. That is why these pronouns make up two groups based on the deictic opposition.

2 numbers, 5 cases

and agreed with the nouns in number, gender and case. Demonstrative pronouns had one more grammatical category: Far-Near, pointing to objects which are near as opposed to those which are far.
Demonstrative pronouns played an important functional role in the grammatical system of OE, helping to differentiate homonymous forms of nouns.

specific kinds of actions expressed by the verb. Structurally, they

could be primary and secondary (or derived). The latter could be derived from simple (primary) adjectives with the help of suffixes -e and –lice : heard – hearde, heardlic – heardlice. The suffix -lice of adverbs in ME will be reduced to -lic and thus will coincide in form with -lic of adjectives. That is why in ModE we have homophonic forms: adjectives and adverbs having suffix -ly.

wundrum, dæʒ – dæʒes; from prepositional phrases: dune – of

dune (down), wæʒ – of wæʒ (away). OE adjectives could form degrees of comparison with the help of suffixes -or and -ost: fæst – fæstor – fæstost. Some adjectives had i-Umlaut in the comparative and superlative degrees: lonʒ – lenʒor – lenʒost. There were also suppletive degrees of comparison: wel – betre – best and others.