Declension of adjectives

The paradigm of the adjective is similar to that of the noun and the pronoun, i.e. it compromises Gender, Number, and Case.

The grammatical category of case was built up by five forms: the Nominative, the Accusative, the Dative, the Genitive and the Instrumental.

There were two ways of declining adjectives – the definite and the indefinite declension. The adjective followed the definite declension mainly if the noun if modified had another attribute – a demonstrative pronoun, and they were declined as indefinite otherwise.

The grammatical suffixes – forms of cases mainly coincided with those of nouns with the stem originally ending in a vowel or -n, yet in some cases we find pronominal suffixes example, in the Genitive Plural, in Dative Singular, etc.

Declension of adjectives

Degrees of comparison

The adjective in Old English changed its forms not only to show the relation of the given adjective to other words in the sentence which was expressed by the gender, number and case of the adjective, but also to show the degree of the quality denoted by the adjective, i.e. the forms of the adjective in Old English could expressed degrees of comparison.

The degrees of comparison were expressed, the same as all other grammatical notions, synthetically, namely:

a) by means of suffixation:

heard – heardra – heardost (hard)

b) by means of vowel gradation plus suffixation:

eald – ieldra – ieldest (old)

c) by means of suppletive forms

Зōd – bettra – betst (good)

the first means being unquestionably the most common.

Both suffixation and the use of suppletive forms in the formation of the degrees of comparison are original means that can be traced back to Common Germanic. But the use of vowel interchange is a feature which is typical of the English language only and was acquired by the language in the pre-historic period of its development.

The origin of vowel gradation in the forms

eald – ieldra – ieldest

is a result of the process of palatal mutation which the root-vowel ea underwent under the influence of the original stem-forming suffix –i, ie.

Positive Comparative Suppletive

Degree degree degree

eald ieldra ieldest

ealdira ealdist

ealdira > ieldra ealdist > ieldest

A similar case is observed with strong (strong), long (long) etc.

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Summary

A careful study of the systems of declensions of nouns, pronouns and adjectives shows that the pronominal and adjectival paradigms are more developed, they are richer in the number of word-forms. The homonymity of forms although existing (especially in the declension of the definite adjective) is not so pronounced and the oppositions between word-forms are more evident.

There were three kinds of declensions – noun, pronoun (with two subdivisions) and adjective. They had the same grammatical categories, the main difference being in the quantity of the categorical forms of number (three number-forms in personal pronouns) and case (four case-forms – nouns, five case-forms – personal pronouns and adjectives).

The subdivision within the system of each part of speech was based on the difference in the material forms (the nouns – based on the original stem-suffix, the pronoun – the number of categorical forms, the adjective – strong and weak declensions with the functional difference.

LECTURE