Declensions

Besides, the adjectives had two declensions, strong and weakIn OE the adjective had the categories of gender (m, f, n), number and case – 5 cases. The category of gender unlike that of a noun was purely grammatical. The adjective agreed with the noun it modified in all the categories (gender, number, case).

In OE, like in other Germanic languages, there were two types of the adjective declensions: weak and strong.

Strong decl. was inherited from IE. Weak decl. is a special Germanic feature. not found in other languages. Unlike a noun, an adjective did not belong to a certain type of declension. Every adj. could be declined according to strong or weak declension. The choice of them depended upon a number of factors: the syntactic function of the degree of comparisson, the presence of noun determiners, seldom having the meaning of the adjective. The adj. was declined according to the strong declension when used predicatively and when used attributively – without any determiners:

He wæs swyþe spedig man. – He was a very rich man.

Weak declension forms were used when the adj. was preceded by a demonstrative pronoun (they are associated with the meaning of definiteness):

Se spedyga man. – He is a rich man.

Some adj-s were always declined strong: eall (all), manig (many), oþor (other).

Others were always weak. These were adj-s in the comparative and superlative degrees.

The formal differences between declensions were similar to those of the noun declensions. The endings of the strong declension mainly coincided with the endings of -a stems of nouns and of adj-s in the masc. and neutr., and of o-stems in the fem. Some adj-s in the strong declension of adj-s were similar to the endings of pronouns:

-um (Dat.sing.), -ne (Acc. sg. masc.), -ra (Gen. pl.), -re (Gen. AND Dat. sg., fem.).

Therefore, the strong declension of adj-s is sometimes called the pronominal declension. As for the weak declension, it used the same endings as m-stems of m-nouns, except that in the Gen. pl. the pronominal ending –ra was used instead of the weak ending –ena.

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