17. Adjective.

The adjective in OE could change for number, gender and case. Those were forms of agreement of the adjective with the noun it. Like nouns, adjectives had three genders and two numbers. The category of case: in addition to the four cases of nouns they had one more case, Instr. used when the adjective served as an attribute to a noun in the Dat. case expressing an instrumental meaning. Gender 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. All other cases disappeared by the end of the 13^th c. also due to the homonymy of inflections. Most adjectives in OE could be declined in two ways: according to the weak and to the strong declension. The strong and weak declensions arose due to the use of several stem-forming suffixes in PG: vocalic a-, ō-, ū- and i(strong- and consonantal n-(weak). Most adjectives could be declined in both ways. The adjective had a strong form when used predicatively and when used attributively without any determiners. The weak form was employed when the adjective was preceded by a demonstrative pronoun or the Gen. case of personal pronouns. Some adjectives, however, did not conform with these rules: a few adjectives were always declined strong, e.g. eall, maniз, ōþer (NE all, many, other), while several others were always weak: adjectives in the superlative and comparative degrees, ordinal numerals, the adjective ilca ‘same’. The Adjective lost many of its categories in ME as far as all the inflections were lost. Thus it became an unchangeable part of speech. Most OE adjectives distinguished between three degrees of comparison: positive, comparative and superlative. The regular means used to form the comparative and the superlative from the positive were the suffixes –ra and –est/-ost. Sometimes suffixation was accompanied by an interchange of the root-vowel. In ME the following changes happened: In most cases inflections -er, -est were used to form the comparative and the superlative degrees; Root-sound interchange fell into disuse (long – longer – longest), though in some cases it was preserved as an exception from the rule (e.g. old – elder – eldest; far – further – furthest); more + Adj (comparative)|| most + Adj (superlative). It was applicable to all adjectives and was interchangeable with -er, -est way of formation till 17^th – 18^th c. In NE, during the Normalisation Period, the modern rule appeared and this way was applicable only to a certain group of adjectives.

18. Demonstr. Pronoun.

Simple-se, emph-this

Demonstrative pronouns belong to an ancient class of words that goes back to two Indo-European roots – se and to. In OE the sound [Ө] started to dominate over the sound [s]. Demonstrative pronouns in OE changed in Gender, Number, Case. In ME the Case system disappeared due to the fact that there were some homonymous forms. In NE the Gender was lost due to the fact that there were some homonymous forms (see the table above: e.g. þes/þæs – M, Sg, Gen; N, Sg, Gen; þæm – M, Sg, Dat; N, Sg, Dat; þissum – M, Sg, Dat; N, Sg, Dat) and the following changes happened to the pronouns: se (M, Sg, Nom) – turned into the definite article “the” (discussed more particularly in the point “Rise of Articles” below); sēo (F, Sg, Nom) – turned into the personal pronoun “she” (discussed more particularly in the point “Personal Pronouns” (changes in the 3^rd person) below); þæt (N, Sg, Nom) – remained as the unchangeable demonstrative pronoun “that”; þis (N, Sg, Nom) – remained as the unchangeable demonstrative pronoun “this”; þý (M, Sg, Instr) – in OE was used in the comparative constructions like “the sooner…the better” but in NE was not distinguished any more phonetically and merged with the unchangeable form of the definite article “the”. The only category that was left in the demonstrative pronouns was the Number (e.g. ModE this – these, that – those). The articles have to do with the category of Determination (definiteness/indefiniteness).Causes for Rise of Articles:In OE the there were two declensions of adjectives – strong (definite) and weak (indefinite) – and the inflections of these declensions indicated whether the noun that followed the adjective was definite or indefinite. At the end of the ME Period the declensions of the Adjective disappeared and there was a necessity to find another way to indicate the definiteness/indefiniteness of a noun. Thus the articles appeared. In OE the word-order was free because inflections were employed to show the relations of the words in a sentence. In ME and NE the majority of the inflections disappeared and the word-order became fixed. This meant that the first place in a sentence was usually occupied by the theme (information already known  marked with the definite article) and the second place – by the rheme (new information  marked with the indefinite article). As it was mentioned above, the definite article appeared from the OE demonstrative pronoun se (M, Sg, Nom) from the paradigm of the OE demonstrative pronoun “that” because it was often used to indicate a definite object or notion The indefinite article appeared from the OE numeral ān (one) and had the meaning of “oneness” (it still indicates only nouns in Sg, i.e. nouns indicating one object or notion).In OE ān had 5-case paradigm that was lost in ME and only one form was left – oon/one. Later it was employed in the building of the indefinite article a/an.