Adjectives & Adverbs

At a glance

The key differences between Early Middle English (eME) and Modern English (ModE):

1. -e is added before plural nouns or when an adjective represents a plural noun or pronoun;
2. -e is added after 'the', demonstrative adjectives and possessive pronouns;
3. -e is added to an adjective to form the corresponding adverb.

adding ~e to adjectives

Adjectives ending in a consonant add an e in the following circumstances:

• when accompanying a plural noun or pronoun - t`ey% alle sungen, t`ey% sungen alle imaen (Orm), Alle hi__ waeren forsworen, T`a__ diden hi__ alle wunder<sup>1</sup>, and go__de men (PC2)
• when representing a plural noun or pronoun - and he__ dide alle in prisun (PC2), gre__tinges to__ alle his holde (PH3)
• when used with the definite article t`e, a demonstrative adjective t`is or t`at, a possessive pronoun such as hire or u__re, or a name or term of address - t`e ilke pi__ning (PC2), his wi__de throte (AW)

forming adverbs

In ModE, adverbs are generally formed from adjectives, by adding -ly. In ME the corresponding ending is -e. Hence ModE bold boldly is equivalent to ME ba__ld ba__lde.

The ending -li__ce exists in ME, but this is the adverbial form of the adjectival ending -lic. It is not applied universally, to all adverbs in ME.

Note also that there are traces of the ME adjectival ending -lic in ModE adjectives such as lively and lovely and manly i.a.

The adverbial use of the genitive case of nouns is also common in ME. Examples are day%es (daily) and t`ankes (willingly).

"of all"

of all in ModE expression such as best of all, first of all, worst of all etc, appears as a prefix in ME - alre-.

Hence alrebest, alrefirst, alrelaest, alrele__fest etc