4.3. The Adjective

Declension of adjectives in Old Germanic languages is complicated and finds no parallel in other Indo-European languages. In Latin, for example, declension of adjectives does not basically differ from that of nouns. In Germanic languages things are different. The Germanic adjectives had two types of declension, strong and weak. Most adjectives could be declined both in accordance with the strong and weak type. The adjective agreed with the noun in gender, case and number and by its type of declension expressed the idea of definiteness (weak declension) or indefiniteness (strong declension). This meaning was later expressed by a new grammatical class of words – the article.

The adjective had degrees of comparison, the forms of which were in most instances formed with the help of suffixes -iz/ōz and –ist/-ōst. As in mаnу Indo-European languages, some adjectives used different roots for different forms, e.g. Goth. leitils—minniza—minnists ‘little – less – the least’.

In Germanic languages all nominal parts of speech, i.e. nouns, adjectives, numerals, pronouns, participles and even the infinitive, were declined. The system of declension was well developed and very complicated, including nominal and pronominal types of declension.

4.4. The Verb

The verbal system of Old Germanic languages consists of different elements. The main mass of verbs are strong verbs, which derive their past tense and past participle by means of gradation, and weak verbs, which derive these forms by means of a suffix –d- (-t-).

Besides these two large groups, there are also the preterite-present verbs with a peculiar system of forms and a few irregular verbs which do not belong to any of the preceding groups.

The terms strong and weak were proposed by J. Grimm; he called the verbs strong because they had preserved the richness of form since the age of the parent-language and in this sense could be contrasted to weak verbs lacking such variety of form. From the verbs the terms were extended to noun and adjective declensions.

Weak verbs are a specifically Germanic innovation, for the device used in building their principal forms is not found outside the Germanic group. They built the Past tense and Participle II by inserting a special suffix between the root and the ending. The suffix – PG –ð – is referred to as the dental suffix, as [ð] is an interdental fric­ative consonant. The use of the dental suffix is seen in the following forms of weak verbs in OG languages:

Infinitive Past Tense Participle II ne

Goth domjan domida [ð] domips ‘deem, deemed’

О Icel kalla kallaða kallaðr ‘call, called’

OE macian macode macod ‘make, made’

The dental suffix [ð, θ, d] is a marker of the Past tense and Participle II; it is preceded by remnants of the old stem-suffixes: -i- in the Goth domida, c in the OE macode. The weak verbs formed several classes with different stem-suffixes.

The Germanic verb had a well-developed system of categories, including the category of person (first, second, third), number (singular and plural), tense (past and present, the latter also used for expressing future actions), mood (indicative, imperative and optative) and voice (only in Gothic – active and mediopassive). The categorial forms employed synthetic means of form-building.