41. The numerals. Its historical development

A numeral is a part of speech designating numbers or related to specifying quantities and any other countable divisions, for instance English words such as 'two', 'second', 'twice', or even compounds like 'seventy-seven'.

Numerals may be simple, such as 'eleven', or compound, such as 'twenty-three'. They indicate cardinal numbers. Various other number words are derived from numerals, but are not themselves numerals. Examples are ordinal numbers (first, second, third, etc.; from 'third' up, these are also used for fractions) and multiplicative adverbs (once, twice, and thrice).

The English numbering system comes from the Greek numbering system. Originally each number was written so each number contained the appropriate number of angles; that is number one was written so that it contained one angle; number two had two angles and so forth.

In OE, numerals 1-3 were declined; 4-19 were usually invariable if used as attributes to a substantive, but they were declined if used without substantive. Numbers consisting of tenth and units were denoted in the following way: 22 twà and twentiƷ. Ordinal numbers were declined as weak adjectives. Some examples of OE numerals: 8 – eahta, 8^th – eahtoÞa, 10 – tēn, tŷn, 10^th – tēoÞa.

The ME numbers, both cardinal and ordinal, developed from OE: 1 - ȏn (OE ān), 5^th – fifte (OE fīfta); there appeared the word millioun of French origin.

MnE numerals developed from ME without any particular changes, in according with phonetic laws of the period, e.g. ME 1 ȏn – one, 5^th ME fifte – fifth.

42. The adverb. Its historical development

An adverb is a word that changes or qualifies the meaning of a verb, adjective, other adverb, clause, sentence or any other word or phrase. Adverbs are traditionally regarded as one of the parts of speech, although the wide variety of the functions performed by words classed as adverbs means that it is hard to treat them as a single uniform category. Adverbs typically answer questions such as how?, in what way?, when?, where?, and to what extent?.

Many English adverbs are formed from adjectives, by adding the ending -ly, as in hopefully, widely). Certain words can be used as both adjectives and adverbs, such as fast, straight, and hard. There are also a large number of adverbs that are not derived from adjectives: today, here, very, much, too ,only, just, however,etc... Some suffixes that are fairly commonly used to form adverbs from nouns are -ward[s] (as in homeward[s]) and -wise (as in lengthwise). A few adverbs retain irregular inflection for comparative and superlative forms: much, more, most; a little, less, least; or follow the regular adjectival inflection: fast, faster, fastest, etc. However most adverbs form comparatives and superlatives by modification with more and most: often, more often, most often.

There were primary and secondary adverbs in the OE. Primary adv were mainly pronominal words, which had derived from any other part of speech (e.g. swā – so, hēr- here). Secondary adverbs were much more numerous and were derived from substantives and adjectives, when some case form of any part of speech became isolated from the declension system and became a separate word (e.g. hwilum ‘sometimes’ from D case pl form of the substantive hwil ‘while’). An entire category of OE adv in –e became a derivative suffix, which originated from Instrumental case sing neuter. This paved the way for deriving adv in –lice from adjectives which had no parallel variants in –lic. For forming degrees of comparison suffixes –r and –st preceded by the vowel –o- were used (wīde – wīdor – wīdost).

In ME some adv derived in OE from adj by mean of the suffix –e were still in use. A new way of deriving adv, which had arisen in OE, be means of suffix –ly ,developed. Degrees of comparison of adv were used the same as for adj (gretly - gretter – grettest). a few adv had suppletive degrees of comparison (evile – wers – werst; much - mȏre - mȏst). some ME adv got the morpheme –s ( ME always, hennes (MnE hence).

In MnE the suffix –ly became the only productive adverforming suffix. The ME adv with –e suffix, inherited from OE, lost their –e and thus became indistinguishable from corresponding adj; the other old adv coincided with their adj received –ly suffix. In the formation of comparison no change occurred in MnE as against ME.