Топик: The history of Old English and its development

As for weak adjectives, they also exist in the language. The thing is that one need not learn by heart which adjective is which type - strong or weak, as you should do with the nouns. If you have a weak noun as a subject, its attributive adjective will be weak as well. So - a strong adjective for a strong noun, a weak adjective for a weak noun, the rule is as simple as that.

Thus if you say "a black tree" that will be blæc tréow (strong), and "a black eye" will sound blace éage . Here is the weak declension example (blaca - black):

Sg. Pl.
Masc. Neut. Fem.
N blaca blace blace blacan
G blacan blacan blacan blæcra
D blacan blacan blacan blacum
A blacan blace blacan blacan

Weak declension has a single plural for all genders, which is pleasant for those who don't want to remeber too many forms. In general, the weak declension is much easier.

The last thing to be said about the adjectives is the degrees of comparison. Again, the traditional Indo-European structure is preserved here: three degrees (absolutive, comparative, superlative) - though some languages also had the so-called "equalitative" grade; the special suffices for forming comparatives and absolutives; suppletive stems for several certain adjectives.

The suffices we are used to see in Modern English, those -er and -est in weak, weaker, the weakest , are the direct descendants of the Old English ones. At that time they sounded as -ra and -est . See the examples:

earm (poor) - earmra - earmost
blæc (black) - blæcra - blacost

Many adjectives changed the root vowel - another example of the Germanic ablaut:

eald (old) - ieldra - ieldest
strong - strengra - strengest
long - lengra - lengest
geong (young) - gingra - gingest

The most widespread and widely used adjectives always had their degrees formed from another stem, which is called "suppletive" in linguistics. Many of them are still seen in today's English:

gód (good) - betera - betst (or sélra - sélest )
yfel (bad) - wiersa - wierest
micel (much) - mára - máést
lýtel (little) - læ'ssa - læ'st
fear (far) - fierra - fierrest, fyrrest
néah (near) - néarra - níehst, nýhst
æ'r (early) - æ'rra - æ'rest
fore (before) - furþra - fyrest (first)

Now you see what the word "first" means - just the superlative degree from the adjective "before, forward". The same is with níehst from néah (near) which is now "next".

Old English affixation for adjectives:

1. -ede (group "adjective stem + substantive stem") - micelhéafdede (large-headed)
2. -ihte (from substantives with mutation) - þirnihte (thorny)
3. -ig (from substantives with mutation) - hálig (holy), mistig (misty)
4. -en, -in (with mutation) - gylden (golden), wyllen (wóllen)
5. -isc (nationality) - Englisc, Welisc, mennisc (human)
6. -sum (from stems of verbs, adjectives, substantives) - sibbsum (peaceful), híersum (obedient)
7. -feald (from stems of numerals, adjectives) - þríefeald (threefold)
8. -full (from abstract substantive stems) - sorgfull (sorrowful)
9. -léás (from verbal and nominal stems) - slæpléás (sleepless)
10. -líc (from substantive and adjective stems) - eorþlíc (earthly)
11. -weard (from adjective, substantive, adverb stems) - inneweard (internal), hámweard (homeward)

The Old English Pronoun.

Pronouns were the only part of speech in Old English which preserved the dual number in declension, but only this makes them more archaic than the rest parts of speech. Most of pronouns are declined in numnber, case and gender, in plural the majority have only one form for all genders.

We will touch each group of Old English pronouns and comment on them.

1.Personal pronouns

Through the last 1500 years mín became mine , gé turned into you (ye as a colloquial variant). But changes are still significant: the 2nd person singular pronouns disappeared from the language, remaining only in poetic speech and in some dialects in the north of England. This is really a strange feature - I can hardly recall any other Indo-European language which lacks the special pronoun for the 2nd person singular (French tu , German du , Russian ty etc.). The polite form replaced the colloquial one, maybe due to the English traditional "ladies and gentlemen" customs. Another extreme exists in Irish Gaelic, which has no polite form of personal pronoun, and you turn to your close friend the same way as you spoke with a prime minister - the familiar word, translated into French as tu . It can sound normal for English, but really funny for Slavic, Baltic, German people who make a thorough distinction between speaking to a friend and to a stranger

2. Demonstrative pronouns ('I' means the instrumental case)

3. Interrogative pronouns

N hwá hwæt
G hwæs hwæs
D hwæ'm hwæ'm
A hwone hwæt
I - hwý, hwí

These pronouns, which actually mean the masculine and the neuter varieties of the same pronoun, derive from Proto-Indo-European *kwis , with *kw becoming hw in Germanic languages. In Gothic the combination hw was considered as one sound which is another proof that the Indo-European the labiovelar sound kw was a single sound with some specific articulation.

Later Germanic languages changed the sound in a different way: in Norwegian it remained as hv , in German turned into w (as in wer 'who', was 'what'), in English finally changed into wh pronounced in most cases [w], but somewhere also like [h] or [hw].

Interesting that the instrumental of the word hwæt , once being a pronoun form, later became the word why in English. So 'why?' is originally an instrumental case of the interrogative pronoun.

Other interrogative pronouns, or adverbs, as they are sometimes called, include the following, all beginning with hw :

hwilc 'which?' - is declined as the strong adjective (see adjectives above)
hwonne 'when?' - this and following are not declined, naturally
hwæ'r 'where?'
hwider 'whither?'
hwonan 'whence?'

4. Other kinds of pronouns

They include definite, indefinite, negative and relative, all typical for Indo-European languages. All of them still exist in Modern English, and all of them are given here: