History of the english language

OE adjective and its categories

There are primary adjectives, dating back from the very old times and derivative adjectives made by adjective-forming suffixes from nouns. this part of speech agrees with the noun it modifies in number, gender and case. Consequently, the adjectives have the same categories as the nouns do. Besides, they have categories which are purely adjectival.The adjective in Old English had the following categories:number - the singular and the plural;gender - masculine, neuter and feminine;case - 4/5 (nominative, genitive, dative accusative and partly instrumental)Besides, the adjectives had two declensions, strong and weak . The weak form of the adjective is used after a demonstrative pronoun, a personal pronoun or a noun in the genitive case, no matter whether the adjective is before the noun or after it and may be a stable epithet to the noun. When the adjective is not so accompanied, or is preceded by an adjective of quantity or number, it is declined strong. Specifically adjectival categories are the degrees of comparison - the positive, the comparative and the superlative. These are characteristic only for the qualitative adjectives.gs that are almost the same for the adjectives and for the participles).Qualitative adjectives had degrees of comparison (positive, comparative and superlative). The forms of the comparative and the superlative degree are made synthetically, by adding suffixes -ra and -ost/-est.soft - softra - softost (soft) Sometimes suffixation was accompanied by /-mutation of a root vowel: eald - ieldra - ieldest (old)
The adjective. Grammatical Categories
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'.