Demonstrative Pronouns

There were the following demonstrative pronouns:

se (masculine) mou

þxt (neuter) me

seo (feminine) ma

Plural þa

	Singular			Plural
	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	All cases
nom acc gen dat instr	se, se þone þxs þxm þy, þon, þe	seo þa þxre þxre	þxt þxt þxs þxm þy, þon, þe	þa þa þara þxm

Interrogative Pronouns

hwā (who) (masculine and feminine)

hwæt (what) (neuter)

T hey had four-case paradigm. The instrumental case of hwæt was used as a separate interrogative word hwy (why). Such interrogative pronouns as hwelc, hwæþer (which) were used as adjective pronouns.

Indefinite pronouns

Indefinite pronouns were many.

ān and its derivative æniZ (one, any)

nān (none)

nānþinZ (nothing)

nawiht / nowiht / nōht (not)

hwæt – hwuZu (something)

4. The oe Adjective

OE adjectives had the categories of numbers, gender and case, degrees of comparison and definite/idefinite.

The category of case in adjectives differed from that of nouns. They had one more case – Instrumental. It was used when the adjective was an attribute to a noun in the Dative case expressing an instrumental meaning:

lytle werede – with (the help of) a small troop

OE adjectives declined in two ways: according to the weak and according to the strong declension. The endings of strong declension coincided with the endings of a-stems of nouns for adjectives in masculine and neuter and of o-stems in the feminine. Some endings in the strong declension of adjectives have no parallels in the noun paradigm; they are similar to the endings of pronouns. The strong declension is called sometimes pronominal.

The weak declension used the same ending as n-stem nouns except in the Gen. Case, plural it was -ra (but not -ena)

Most adjectives could be declined in both ways: strong and weak. It was determined by:

• the syntactical function of the adjective

• the degrees of comparison

• the presence of noun determiners

The adjective had a strong form when used predicatively and when used attributively without any determiners:

Þa menn sindon Zode – the men are good

mid hnescre beddinZe – with soft bedding

The weak form was employed when the adjective was preceded by a demonstrative pronoun or the Genetive case of personal pronouns.

	Strong	Weak
	Masculine	Masculine
Nom. Gen. Dat. Acc. Instr.	blind blindes blindum blindne blinde	blinda blindan blindan blindan blindan

But some adjectives were always declined strong:

eall (all)

maniZ (many)

oþer (other)

Weak declension had adjectives in the superlative and comparative degrees and the adjective ilca (same)

There existed also semantic difference between strong and weak forms of declension. The strong forms were associated with the meaning of indefiniteness – corresponded to the meaning of a/an.

The weak forms had the meaning of definiteness (“the”). Weak forms were regularly used together with demonstrative pronouns. This opposition of weak and strong forms gave the ground for A. Smirnitsky to single out the category of definiteness/ indefiniteness.