ESSENTIAL VOCABULARY

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There were two demonstrative pronouns in OE: the prototypes of this and that. They distinguished five cases (instrumental, the fifth, had a special form only in the masculine and neuter singular), two numbers, three genders and had only one form for all genders in the plural: sē (тот), sēo (та), þæt (то), þā (те); þes (этот), þēos (эта), þis (это), þās (эти).

Declension of the Demonstrative Pronoun sē

Declension of the Demonstrative Pronoun þes

Note. Forms with the diphthong -eo-are due to back mutation.

The meaning of the pronoun sē often weakened, it approached the definite article: sē mann (the man), sēo sǣ (the sea), þæt lond (the land). This was usually accompanied by the loss of stress and by the change of the form itself sē>se: se cyninʒ «the king» (the example is from The Voyage of Wulfstan)

Adjectives

OE adjectives possessed the categories of number (singular and plural), gender (masculine, feminine and neuter), case (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative and, partly, instrumental) and degrees of comparison (positive, comparative and superlative).

As in other Gc languages most adjectives in OE could be declined in two ways: according to the weak and to the strong declension. The adjective had a strong form when used predicatively and when used attributively without any determiner. The weak form was used when the adjective was preceded by a demonstrative pronoun or the genitive case of personal pronouns.

Endings of the strong declension coincided with the endings of a-stems of nouns for adjectives in the masculine and neuter and of ō-stems in the feminine. Some endings in the strong declension of adjectives are similar to the endings of pronouns: -umfor dative singular, -nefor accusative singular masculine, -rin some feminine singular and plural endings. Therefore, sometimes, the strong declension of adjectives is called pronominal. Strong forms were associated with the meaning of indefiniteness, weak forms – with the meaning of definiteness.

A few adjectives were always declined as strong: eall (all), maniʒ (many), ōþer (other). Several others were always weak: adjectives in the comparative and superlative degrees, ordinal numerals, the adjective ilca (the same).

As for the weak declension, adjectives were declined like n-stems nouns, except that in the genitive plural the pronominal ending -rais often used instead of the weak -ena.Sometimes the weak declension of adjectives is called nominal.

Strong Declension of Adjectives

wīs (wise) dol(foolish)

Note. Adjectives with a short root syllable, like dol, retained the ending –uin the nominative singular feminine and neuter,and accusative plural neuter, whereas adjectives with a long syllable, like wīs,had already lost it.