OE adjective and its categories
There are primary adjectives, dating back from the
very old times and derivative adjectives made by
adjective-forming suffixes from nouns.
This part of speech agrees with the noun it modifies in
number, gender and case.
Consequently, the adjectives have the same categories
as the nouns do.
The adjective in Old English had the following categories:
number -
the singular and the plural;
gender -
masculine, neuter and feminine;
case - 4/5 (nominative, genitive, dative accusative and partly
instrumental)
Besides, the adjectives had
two declensions,
strong and weak.
The weak form of the adjective is used after a demonstrative
pronoun, a personal pronoun
or a noun in the genitive case, no
matter whether the adjective is before the noun or after it and
may be a stable epithet to the noun.
When the adjective is not so accompanied,
or is preceded by an
adjective of quantity or number, it is
declined strong.
Specifically adjectival categories are the degrees of comparison - the
positive, the comparative and the superlative.
These are characteristic only for the qualitative adjectives. That are
almost the same for the adjectives and for the participles. Qualitative
adjectives had degrees of comparison (positive,
comparative and
superlative). The forms of the comparative and the superlative degree
are made synthetically, by adding suffixes
-ra and -ost/-est. soft -
