System of Declensions. The Development of the Adjective

Case

Gender

The Development of the Adjective

See Lecture 14 for general information on the Adjective.

Historically the Adjective is a younger class of words as compared to the Noun. So it has borrowed many of its categories and inflections from the Noun and the Pronoun.

The Adjective had the following categories:

It still existed in OE but was the first category to disappear in the 11^th c.

· At the end of OE Period Instrumental Case fell together with Dative Case due to the homonymy of inflections (see the table below);

· All other cases disappeared by the end of the 13^th c. also due to the homonymy of inflections (see the table below).

The system of declension was inherited from PG. Adjectives had two declensions that had to do also with the category of determination – strong (definite) and weak (indefinite) – and unlike nouns practically all adjectives could be declined both ways (by strong and weak declension). So an adjective did not belong to a particular declension, its declension depended on several factors that will be mentioned below:

Type of Declension	Strong(definite)	Weak(indefinite)
Borrowed inflections	from a-stemando-stem	from n-stem
Factors for distinguishing type of declension	– Adj used attributively without any determiners (demonstrative pronouns); – Adj used predicatively.	– Adj preceded by a demonstrative pronoun or Genitive Case of a noun;
Gender	Neuter	Neuter
Number	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
OE Cases	Nominative	blind	blind	blinde	blindan
Genitive	blindes	blindra	blindan	blindra
Dative	blindum	blindum	blindan	blindum
Accusative	blind	blind	blinde	blindan
Instrumental	blinde	blindum	blindan	blindum
ME	Cases disappeared	blind	blinde	blinde	blinde

There were exceptions from the rule: some adjectives were declined always strong (eall (all), maniζ (many), ōþer (other)), others – always weak (ilca (same)).

The endings of the adjectives showed the agreement between a noun and an adjective. There were a lot of homonymous forms (e.g. -um (OE) – N, Sg, Dat, strong; N, Pl, Dat, strong; N, Pl, Dat, weak; N, Pl, Instr, strong; N, Pl, Instr, weak; -e (ME) – N, Pl, strong; N, Sg, weak; N, Pl, weak) à the distinction between the declensions faded in ME and the declensions disappeared as far as there was no necessity any more to keep them.

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