2.2. The adjective

In the course of the ME period the adjective underwent greater simplifying changes than any other part of speech. It lost all its grammatical categories with the exception of the degrees of comparison.

In OE the adjective was declined to show the gender, case and number of the noun it modified; it had a five-case paradigm and two types of declension, weak and strong.

By the end of the OE period the agreement of the adjective with the noun had become looser and in the course of Early ME it was practically lost.

The first category to disappear was gender, which ceased to be distinguished by the adjective in the 11 c.

The number of cases shown in the adjective paradigm was reduced: the Instr. case had fused with the Dat. by the end of OE; distinction of other cases in Early ME was unsteady, as many variant forms of different cases, which arose in Early ME, coincided. In the 13th c. case could be shown only by some variable adjective endings in the strong declension (but not by the weak forms); towards the end of the century all case distinctions were lost.

The strong and weak forms of adjectives were often confused in Early ME texts. The use of a strong form after a demonstrative pronoun was not uncommon, though according to the existing rules, this position belonged to the weak form.

In the 14th c. the difference between the strong and weak form is sometimes shown in the singular with the help of the ending –e.

Number was certainly the most stable nominal category in all the periods. In the 14th c. plural forms were sometimes contrasted to the singular forms with the help of the ending -e in the strong declension. In the 13th and particularly 14th c. there appeared a new plural ending -s. The use of -s is attributed either to the influence of French adjectives, which take -s in the plural or to the influence of the ending -s of nouns. In the age of Chaucer the paradigm of the adjective consisted of four forms distinguished by a single vocalic ending -e.

Table 8.1

Declension of adjectives in Late Middle English

	singular	plural
Strong Weak	blind blinde	blinde blinde

This paradigm included only monosyllabic adjectives ending in a consonant, such as ME bad, good, long. Adjectives ending in vowels and polysyllabic adjectives took no endings and could not show the difference between singular and plural forms or strong and weak forms: ME able, swete, bisy, thredbare and the like were uninflected.

The distinctions between the singular and plural forms, and the weak and strong forms, could not be preserved for long, as they were not shown by all the adjectives; besides, the reduced ending -e was very unstable even in the 14th c. English. In Chaucer's poems, for instance, it is always missed out in accordance with the requirements of the rhythm.