Weak and Strong Declension

Grammatical Categories

THE ADJECTIVE

Other Classes of Pronouns

Interrogative pronouns – hwā, Masc. and Fem., and hw et, Neut., – had a four-case paradigm (NE who, what). The Instr. case of hw et was used as a separate interrogative word hwy (NE why). Some interrogative pronouns were used as adjective pronouns, e.g. hwelc, hw eper.

Indefinite pronouns were a numerous class embracing several simple pronouns and a large number of compounds: an and its derivative eni (NE one, any); nan, made up of an and the negative particle ne (NE none); nanpin, made up of the preceding and the noun ping (NE nothing); nawiht/nowiht/noht (‘nothing’, NE not), hw et-hwu u ‘some­thing’ and many others.

Pronouns of different classes – personal and demonstrative – could be used in a relative function, as connectives. The demonstra­tive se in its various forms and the personal pronoun he, either alone or together with a special relative particle pe could join attributive clauses,

e.g.: Se pe me eh elde se cw eð to me ‘he who healed me, he said to me’

As stated before, the adjective in OE could change for num­ber, gender and case. Those were dependent grammatical categories or forms of agreement of the adjective with the noun it modified or with the subject of the sentence – if the adjective was a predicative. Like nouns, adjectives had three genders and two numbers. The category of case in adjectives differed from that of nouns: in addition to the four cases of nouns they had one more case, Instr. It was used when the ad­jective served as an attribute to a noun in the Dat. case expressing an instrumental meaning – e. g.:

lytle werede 'with (the help of) a small troop'.

As in other OG languages, most adjectives in OE could be declined in two ways: according to the weak and to the strong declen­sion. The formal differences between the declensions, as well as their origin, were similar to those of the noun declensions. The strong and weak declensions arose due to the use of several stem-forming suffixes in PG: vocalic a-, o-, u- and i- and consonantal n-. Accordingly, there developed sets of endings of the strong declension mainly coinciding with the endings of a -stems of nouns for adjectives in the Masc., and Neut. and of o-stems – in the Fem., with some differences between long- and short-stemmed adjectives, variants with - j - and - w -, monosyllabic and polysyllabic adjectives and some remnants of other stems. Some endings in the strong declension of adjectives have no parallels in the noun paradigms; they are similar to the endings of pronouns: - um for Dat. sg, -ne for Acc. sg Masc., [r] in some Fem. and pl endings. Therefore the strong declension of adjectives is sometimes called the "pronomi­nal" declension. As for the weak declension, it uses the same markers as n -stems of nouns except that in the Gen. pl the pronominal ending - ra is often used instead of the weak - ena (see the paradigms in Table 7).

The relations between the declensions of nouns, adjectives and pro­nouns are shown in the following chart:

The difference between the strong and the weak declen­sion of adjectives was not only formal but also semantic. Unlike a noun, an adjective did not belong to a certain type of declension. Most adjec­tives could be declined in both ways. The choice of the declension was determined by a number of factors: the syntactical function of the adjective, the degree of comparison and the presence of noun determiners. The adjective had a strong form when used predicatively and when used attributively without any determiners, e.g.:

The weak form was employed when the adjective was preceded by a de­monstrative pronoun or the Gen. case of personal pronouns, e. g.:

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