4 Old English writings. The adjective, pronoun, and the

Lecture 4


Old English writings. The adjective, pronoun, and the number as a parts of speech in OE. Their grammatical categories.

1. 
   Adjective as a part of speech. Its grammatical categories
   
2. 
   Pronoun as a part of speech. Its grammatical categories
   
3. 
   Number as a part of speech. Its grammatical categories
   

Adjectives in Old English are declined using the same categories as nouns: five cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and instrumental), three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), and two numbers (singular, plural). In addition, they can be declined either strong or weak. The weak forms are used in the presence of a definite or possessive determiner, while the strong ones are used in other situations. The weak forms are identical to those for nouns, while the strong forms use a combination of noun and pronoun endings.

This characteristic of Old English adjectives is important, because there are different declensions that are used depending on whether or an an adjective is used in a grammatically strong or weak manner. A "declension" is simply a list of the different endings
that go on a word to indicate that it is in a certain case (i.e., that it is fulfilling a certain grammatical function).


blæc (black)

	Masculine	Neuter	Feminine
Singular
Nominative	Blæc	blæc	Blacu
Genitive	blaces	blaces	Blæcre
Dative	blacum	blacum	Blæcre
Accusative	blæcne	blæc	Blace
Instrumental	blace	blace	—
Plural
Nominative	blace	blacu	Blaca
Genitive	blacra	blacra	Blacra
Dative	blacum	blacum	Blacum
Accusative	blace	blacu	Blaca

Notes:

• 
  There is a slight difference in declension between short-stemmed (such as glæd, smæl) and long-stemmed (such as gōd, eald) adjectives: in the feminine nominative singular and the neuter nominative or accusative plural the short-stemmed adjectives have the ending –u, while long-stemmes adjectives have a zero ending.
  
• 
  Adjectives with æ in the root syllable change it to a before all endings beginning with a vowel.
  

The weak adjective declension

	Masculine	Neuter	Feminine

Singular
Nominative	Blaca	blace	Blace
Genitive	Blacan	blacan	Blacan
Dative	Blacan	blacan	Blacan
Accusative	Blacan	blace	Blacan
Plural
Nominative	Blacan
Genitive	blæcra (blacena)
Dative	Blacum
Accusative	Blacan

Degrees of comparison

Positive degree	Comparative degree	Superlative degree
earm (poor)	earmra	Earmost
blæc (black)	blæcra	Blacost

Several adjectives have suppletive forms of comparative and superlative

Positive degree	Comparative degree	Superlative degree
gōd (good)	betera sēlra	betst sēlest
yfel (bad)	wiersa	Wierest
micel (large)	māra	Mǣst
lӯtel (little)	lǣssa	Lǣst

The comparatives are declined as strong adjectives; the superlatives rarely take the forms of the strong declension and mostly follow the weak declension.
Almost all Old English adjectives can be either strong or weak, depending on how they are used in a sentence. That's right: the same word is a strong adjective in some contexts and weak in others. Fortunately the rules for determining whether an adjective is strong or weak are very simple, and in any event, "strong" and "weak" are just labels that tell you what ending the adjective takes depending on the case (which, you'll remember, marks the grammatical function) of the noun it is modifying,
Strong Adjectives can stand on their own; they do not need a demonstrative to assist them: Wise kings are kind to their subjects.
Notice there is no demonstrative assisting the adjective. "Wise" is therefore, in this sentence, a Strong Adjective.
If an adjective has a demonstrative assisting it, it will be weak. If the same adjective has no demonstrative, it will be strong. (If the sentence read: "The wise king is kind to his subjects," "wise" would be a weak adjective).

The Old English Pronoun

Most pronouns are declined by number, case and gender; in the plural form most pronouns have only one form for all genders. Additionally, Old English pronouns reserve the dual form (which is specifically for talking about groups of two things, for example "we two" or "you two" or "they two"). These were uncommon even then, but remained in use throughout the period.
Many of the forms above bear strong resemblances to their contemporary English language equivalents: for instance in the genitive case ēower became "your", ūre became "our", mīn became "mine".
The English language once had an extensive declension system similar to Latin, modern German or Icelandic. Old English distinguished between the nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive cases. In addition, the dual was distinguished from the more modern singular and plural. Declension was greatly simplified during the Middle English period, when accusative and dative pronouns merged into a single objective pronoun.
"Who" and "whom", "he" and "him", "she" and "her", etc. are remnants of both the old nominative versus accusative and also of nominative versus dative. In other words, "her" serves as both the dative and accusative version of the nominative pronoun "she". In Old English as well as modern German, these cases had distinct pronouns.
There are different types of pronouns:

• 
  Personal pronouns - usually refer to specific persons or objects
  
• 
  Interrogative pronouns - used to ask questions of identity like Modern English "who", "what", and "which one"
  
• 
  Relative pronouns - used after another substansive to add additional information, like Modern English "whom" in "John is the person whom I like"
  
• 
  Demonstrative pronouns - words used often when pointing to something, with with a sense of location, as in Modern English "this" or "that"
  
• 
  Indefinite pronouns - used to talk about nobody in particular, or about everyone in general, like Modern English "anybody" and "everybody". Also includes negative pronouns - pronouns used to talk about "nobody" or "nothing".
  

Like nouns and adjectives, pronouns are declined according to case, gender (only sometimes), and number.
Personal pronouns

First person
Case	Singular		Dual			Plural
Nom.	Ic		Wit			Wē
Gen.	Mīn		Uncer			ūre, ūser
Dat.	Mē		Unc			Ūs
Acc.	mec, mē		Uncit			ūsic, ūs
Second person
Case	Singular		Dual			Plural
Nom.	Þū		Git			Gē
Gen.	Þīn		Incer			Ēower
Dat.	Þē		Inc			Ēow
Acc.	Þēc, Þē		incit, inc			ēowic, ēow
Third person
	Masc.	Fem.		Neuter	Plural
Nom.	Hē	hēo, hīo		Hit	hīe, hī, hú, hēo
Gen.	His	hire, hiere		His	hira, heora, hiera, hyra
Dat.	Him	hire, hiere		Him	him, heom
Acc.	Hine	hīe, hī, hú		Hit	hīe, hī, hú, hēo

The possessive pronouns are derived from the genitive case of the personal pronouns. The 1^stand 2d person possessive pronouns are declined like adjectives to show the agreement with the noun, the 3d person possessive pronouns (his, hire, hiera) are unchanged.