The Position of the Adjective in Old English Introduction

Adjective position: some general comments

First I would like to have a look at what may determine the order of adjective and noun in a general way, what meaning differences may be attached to differences in position of the adjective, before we turn to Old English.

In Dutch, as in English, adjectives do not normally follow the noun, prenominal position is the rule. Still, we do find occasional examples where the adjective follows. A fairly recent one is the expression, een broodje gezond ‘a roll (of bread) healthy’. Since this is such a new, and still fresh expression, it may be fruitful to ask what the difference is between this and the “normal” order, een gezond broodje ‘a healthy roll’, because this difference may still be “alive” (in the sense of not yet conventionalized) to the native speaker. For most Dutch speakers that I questioned, there are two differences. First of all, gezond could be somehow adverbial, it can be replaced by the PP met gezonde ingredienten ‘with healthy ingredients’ (lettuce, tomato etc). So gezond may have started off as a kind of abbreviated form of such a PP. At the same time, however, it was felt that the postnominal position also gave the word gezond a kind of emphasis, it was much more striking than een gezond broodje; in fact, it expresses a contrast between rolls that are the norm and not so good for you (in these days of slimming and health-awareness), and this one that is different because it is good for you. It was also suggested that een broodje gezond is patterned on een broodje kaas ‘a roll cheese’ but here the postnominal word is itself a noun. But it has to be noticed that the opposite order, een kaasbroodje ‘a cheese roll’, is indeed a totally different matter. The first is a roll, cut open, with slices of cheese put in between, the second is a kind of pastry which has been baked with cheese in it, usually served hot. In other words, the postposed noun again suggests a PP (a roll with cheese), which is not true for the preposed noun (a cheesy roll). So what we can conclude from this single example is that the order makes a difference, that somehow the adjective before the noun changes the noun in question (the roll is no longer an ordinary roll), while the adjective after the noun provides extra information about the noun, and possibly gives it extra emphasis. Whether the extra emphasis is due to the postposition itself or to the unnaturalness of this position in Dutch remains to be seen.
Melita Stavrou (1996) has written an article on adjective position in Modern Greek, in which she argues that the post- and prenominal adjective positions in Greek convey subtle semantic and pragmatic differences. She follows ideas expressed by Bolinger (1967) on “attributive and predicative adjectives in English” and on “linear modification” (1952, repr. 1972). Bolinger’s ideas in these two articles are clearly perceptually (I would say iconically) based. Stavrou does not follow up or go deeply into these iconic insights but she shows that the semantic/pragmatic differences that follow from what Bolinger sees as an iconic or perceptual order also apply to Modern Greek. Bolinger (1972: 31) writes: “the linear geometry of the sentence imposes certain relationships upon the elements that compose it.” The principle that he uncovers is perceptual in that whatever comes first in a linear sequence determines to some extent how the next element is to be interpreted (p. 32). Such a contrast is of course only possible if the elements concerned can occupy more than one position. This is the case with adjectives in Modern Greek, and also in Spanish (Bolinger’s examples are from Spanish), but much less so in Modern English because adjectives are on the whole fixed to prenominal position. Bolinger schematizes his idea as follows:

----------------------------

------------------------
A N N A
------------------------
----------------------------

The diagram expresses that the element that comes first (A or N) modifies the rest of the phrase, so in Spanish un hermoso edificio (A-N), refers to a building that has beauty as an inbuilt characteristic; in other words the topic of the sentence is a ‘beautiful building’. When the adjective follows − un edificio hermoso − the adjective as it were splits up the noun, the topic: ‘building’ is now contrasted with other buildings that are not beautiful. Stavrou (1996: 83-84) describes this difference for Modern Greek as follows: “the prehead AP denotes a pre-existing (…) or defining property, whereas the post-head one asserts the (perhaps temporary) possession of a property.” In addition, she notes that in Modern Greek postposition of the adjective is really only possible with indefinite noun phrases,

(1) Katharise ena milo kokino

He/she peeled an apple red
*Katharise to milo kokino
He/she peeled the apple red (Stavrou 1996: 80)

Postposition with a definite noun phrase only occurs when the postposed adjective functions as a so-called “object complement” (small clause), i.e. the adjective is then governed by the verbal predicate and not by the NP head, as in

(2) theli ti bira pagomeni

he/she wants the beer cold (Stavrou 1996: 86),

Because of the differences expressed in (1), Stavrou further links the semantic differences expressed by adjective position with basic semantic differences between definiteness and indefiniteness.

Vincent (1986) has considered the position of the adjective in Italian.⁵ His article provides a very useful overview of the most important studies that have appeared on the position of the modern Romance adjective, and how this applies to Italian. Although a great variety of descriptive terms can be found to differentiate between the two possible adjective positions, Vincent shows that a common denominator can be found for each position in terms of theme/rheme:

L’aggettivo preposto, essendo parte inseparabile della testa, non può avere un valore indipendente, mentre l’aggettivo postposto è sempre rematico rispetto al nome che modifica, anche se la sua posizione sintattica gli conferisce il ruolo di rema secondario.

(‘The preposed adjective, being an inseparable part of the head, cannot have an independent value, while the postposed adjective is always rhematic with respect to the noun that it modifies, even though its syntactic position confers upon it the role of a secondary rheme) (Vincent 1986: 192, translation mine)

He further shows how the structure of the Adjective-Noun phrase resembles in linear terms the structure of existential clauses, which have only a rheme, while that of the Noun-Adjective phrase resembles a predicative clause, which has a theme as subject and a rheme as complement, suggesting the similar order theme/rheme for the noun and adjective respectively, and their independent “value” with respect to one another. His suggestion then resembles the suggestion given for the difference in adjective position in Modern Greek, namely that the postposed adjective functions as a type of secondary predicate. In addition, the notion of theme/rheme corresponds closely to the difference between definiteness and indefiniteness that Stavrou suggested.

Confronted with these ideas of linear (iconic) order, the expression of contrast and the role played by definite/indefiniteness or given/new information, the Old English noun phrase with its possibility of a regular contrast between post- and prenominal adjectives becomes highly interesting.
Since Old English has both strong and weak adjectives, which seem to be linked up somehow with (in)definiteness, it is possible that similar semantic and/or pragmatic distinctions may have played a role there, and that there is a further link between position and weak/strong inflection of the adjectives. We must therefore briefly turn first to the question what the strong and weak forms stand for in Old English. The differences in form between the weak and strong category are given in Table 1, which, incidently, indicates quite clearly that the strong adjective is linguistically more highly marked than its weak equivalent.⁶


Table 1: Strong and Weak adjectives in Old English

(a) declension of strong adjectives (b) declension of weak adjectives