III. Oe Pronoun.

OE pronouns had roughly the same main classes as modern ones: personal, demonstrative, interrogative and indefinite. Other classes – relative, possessive, reflexive – were not fully developed and were not distinctly separated from the main classes. The grammatical categories of the pronouns were either similar to those of nouns (“noun” pronouns), or to those of adjectives (“adjective” pronouns).

Personal pronouns had 3 persons, 3 numbers in the 1 and 2 persons & 2 numbers – in the 3 person. Unlike nouns, OE pronouns began to lose some of their case distinctions: Dat. And Acc. in the 1, 2 persons coincided. The forms of the Gen. Case were used as possessive pronouns, but they can not be regarded as the class of possessive pronouns. The grammatical features of these forms were not homogeneous.

Singular

1^st pers. 2^nd pers. 3^rd pers.

Masc. Femin. Neut.

N. ic N. þu N. he N. heo N. hit

G. min G. þin G. his G. hire G. his

D. me D. þe D. him D. hire D. him

Ac. me (mec) Ac. þec Ac. hine Ac. hie, hi Ac. hit

Plural

1^st pers. 2^nd pers. 3^rd pers.

N. we N. e N. hie (hi, hy, heo)

G. ure G. eower G. hiera (hira, hyra, hiora)

D. us D. eow D. him

Ac. us Ac. eow, eowic Ac. hie (hi, hy, heo)

Among OE demonstrative pronouns we distinguish only 2 (ModE that & this), which had 3 genders in the Sing. and one form for all genders in the Plural. They were declined like adjectives according to a five-case system (the latter – only for Masc. and Neut.).

Singular Plural

Masc. Neut. Femin.

N. se N. þæt N. seo N. þa

G. þæs G. þæs G. þære G. þara, þæra

D. þæm D. þæm D. þære D. þæm, þam

Ac. þone Ac. þæt Ac. þa Ac. þa

Instr. þy Insr. þon ––– ––––

Interrogative pronouns “hwā” (Masc., Fem.) and “hwæt” (Neut.) had 4-case paradigm (ModE who, what). The Instrumental case of “hwæt” was used as a separate interrogative word “hwÿ” (ModE why).

Indefinite pronouns were a numerous class of simple and compaund pronouns (e.g. ān and its derivative ænig (ModE one:any).

IV. OE Adjective was characterized by such grammatical categories as: number, gender and case. They were dependent on the agreement with the noun it modified. Like nouns, adjectives had 3 genders and 2 numbers. But, unlike nouns, adjectives had one more case, Instrumental.

As in other Old Germanic languages, OE adjectives could be declined in 2 ways: according to the weak and strong declensions. The formal difference between the two was similar to those of the noun.

1) Within Strong declension OE adjectives are declined as nouns of a-stem for Masc. and Neut., and as o-stem nouns for Femin. With some differencies between long- and short-vowel stems, and also btw monosyllabic and polysyllabic adjectives.

Some endings of strong adjectives had no parallels in the noun paradigm, for they are similar to the endings of pronouns (e.g. –um in Dat., sing.; -ne in Acc., sing., Masc.; -r in some adj. of Femin.). That’s why the strong declension of adjectives is often called the “pronominal”. (By the way, it’s interesting to mention that in Gothic, for e.g., adjectives in Nomin., sing., Neut. Appear in 2 forms: substantival /without any ending/ and pronominal /with the ending –ata as in the demonstrative pronoun Þata).

Singular

Masc. Neut. Femin.

N. blæc N. blæc N. blacu

G. blaces G. blaces G. blæcre

D. blacum D. blacum D. blæcre

Ac. blæcne Ac. blæc Ac. blace

Instr. Blace Instr. Blace ––

Plural

N. blace N. blacu N. blaca

G. blacra G. blacra G. blacra

D. blacum D. blacum D. blacum

Ac. blace Ac. blacu Ac. blaca

2) As for the Weak declension it used the same markers as n-stem nouns, except the pronominal ending –ra in Gen., pl. (instead of the weak –ena).

Singular

Masc. Neut. Femin.

N. oda N. ode N. ode

G. odan G. odan G. odan

D. odan D. odan D. odan

Ac. odan Ac. ode Ac. odan

Plural (all genders)

14. odan

G. odra ( odena)

4. odum

Ac. odan

Most adjectives could be declined in both ways. It depended on some factors: the syntactical function, the degree of comparison and noun determiners. For e.g., the adjective could be strong when used as a predicative or attribute without any determiners. But, it could be weak when preceeded by a demonstrative pronoun. Some adjectives didn’t conform with these rules, so they always declined as strong (eall “all”, oÞer “other”) or weak (ilca “same”, in the comparative/superlative degrees, ordinal numerals). The main semantic difference btw weak and strong forms was the meaning of definiteness and indefiniteness (corresponding to the definite and indefinite articles accordingly).

To sum up, homonymy of forms in the adjective paradigm was 3 times as high as in the noun. It affected the grammatical categories of the adjective. Gender distinctions, for e.g., were practically non-existent in the plural and lost in most cases of the weak declension in the singular, the forms of Masc. and Neut. of strong adjectives were alike. In late OE the distinction of forms in the adjective paradigm became more blurred (confused, mixed).