OE Adjective (categories, strong and weak declension, degrees of comparison).

ADJECTIVES

• Number – Singular (Sg) and Plural (Pl).
• Gender – Masculine (M), Feminine (F), Neuter (N).
• Case – Nominative (Nom), Genitive (Gen), Dative (Dat), Accusative (Acc) + Instrumental (Instr).

Instrumental Case was used to express instrumental meaning but only in the adjective while the noun stood in Dative Case: by/with + Adjective (Instr) + Noun (Dat)

• Degrees of Comparison – positive, comparative, superlative.
• Determination (Definiteness/Indefiniteness) – today this category has to do with the Article but in OE there were no articles and definiteness/indefiniteness was expressed with the help of inflections of the Adjective, i.e. the inflections of the Adjective helped to determine whether a noun was definite or indefinite.

Historically the Adjective is a younger class of words as compared to the Noun. So it has borrowed many of its categories and inflections from the Noun and the Pronoun.

THE ADJECTIVE HAD THE FOLLOWING CATEGORIES:

Gender
 It still existed in OE but was the first category to disappear in the 11^th c.

Case:

• At the end of OE Period Instrumental Case fell together with Dative Case due to the homonymy of inflections;
• All other cases disappeared by the end of the 13^th c. also due to the homonymy of inflections.

System of Declensions

The system of declension was inherited from PG. Adjectives had two declensions that had to do also with the category of determination – strong (definite) and weak (indefinite) – and unlike nouns practically all adjectives could be declined both ways (by strong and weak declension). So an adjective did not belong to a particular declension, its declension depended on several factors:

There were exceptions from the rule: some adjectives were declined always strong (eall (all), maniζ (many), ōþer (other)), others – always weak (ilca (same)).

The endings of the adjectives showed the agreement between a noun and an adjective. There were a lot of homonymous forms (e.g. -um (OE) – N, Sg, Dat, strong; N, Pl, Dat, strong; N, Pl, Dat, weak; N, Pl, Instr, strong; N, Pl, Instr, weak; -e (ME) – N, Pl, strong; N, Sg, weak; N, Pl, weak) à the distinction between the declensions faded in ME and the declensions disappeared as far as there was no necessity any more to keep them.

NUMBER

There were some homonymous forms in Singular and Plural in both declensions (see the table above: e.g. -um (OE) – N, Sg, Dat, strong; N, Pl, Dat, strong; -e (ME) – N, Sg, weak; N, Pl, weak), so the category of Number disappeared together with the system of declensions.

The Adjective lost many of its categories in ME as far as all the inflections were lost. Thus it became an unchangeable part of speech.

DEGREES OF COMPARISON

In OE there were three ways of formation of the degrees of comparison: